GIFT  OF 


BOMANTIC    LOVE 


AND 


PERSONAL    BEAUTY 


THEIR 

DEVELOPMENT,    CAUSAL   RELATIONS, 
HISTORIC   AND    NATIONAL   PECULIARITIES 


BY 

HENKY   T.    FINCK 


• 

OF 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  co.,  LTD. 

1902 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1887 
BY    HENRY    T.    FINCK 


SIT  UP  AKD  ELECTBOTYPED,  1887 
Naw  EDITION,  FEBBUABT,  1902 


Press  of  J.  J.  Little  &  Co. 
Astor  Place,  New  York 


! 

CONTENTS 


PAOX 

EvOLtTTION  OF  ROMANTIC  LOVE           1    '          .  .  .  .          1 

COSMIC  ATTRACTION  AND  CHEMICAL  AFFINITIES  .  .        3 

FLOWER  LOVE  AND  BEAUTY            ' »           .  .  .  .7 

IMPERSONAL  AFFECTION        .          ".           .  .  .  .11 

PERSONAL  AFFECTIONS          .         * .           .  .  .  .16 

I.  Love  for  Animals  .            .          "  •  .  .  .16 

II.  Maternal  Lovo      ' .          ' .          ' .  .  .  .19 

in.  Paternal  Love      '.          *.          '.  .  .  .20 

iv.  Filial  Love .          ' ,          *,            .  .  .  .22 

v.  Brotherly  and  Sisterly  Love,          .  .  .  .23 

vi.  Friendship.          V           .            .  .  .  v      24 

VII.  Romantic  Love     V           .            .  .  .  .26 

OVERTONES  OF  LOVE  .......      29 

I.  Individual  Preference         .            .  .  .  .30 

II.  Monopoly  or  Exclusiveness             .  .  .  .30 

in.  Jealousy               '  .            .            .  .  .  .30 

iv.  Coyness      .......       30 

v.  Gallantry   .......       31 

vi.  Self-Sacrifice           .            .            .  .  .  .31 

vii.  Sympathy  .            .            .            .  .  .  .31 

vin.  Pride  of  Conquest  and  Possession  .  .  .  ,31 

IX.  Emotional  Hyperbole         .            .  .  .  .       32 

x.  Mixed  Moods         .            .            .  .  .32 

xi.  Admiration  of  Personal  Beauty     .  .  .  .32 

Herbert  Spencer  on  Love            .            *  .  ,  .33 

LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS         .          .          .  .  .  .33 

Courtship            .            .                        .  .  .  .37 

(a)  Jealousy     .            .                         .  .  .  .39 

(6)  Coyness      . 40 

(c)  Individual  Preference        .             .  .  .  .42 

(<£)  Personal  Beauty  and  Sexual  Selection  .  .  .43 

(1)  Protective  Colours          .             .  .48 


ri  CONTEXTS 

(2)  "Warning  Colours 

(3)  Typical  Colours 

(4)  Sexual  Colours   . 

Love  Charms  and  Love  Calls       . 
Love  Dances  and  Display  , 

LOVE  AMONG  SAVAGES 

Strangers  to  Love  .  . 

Primitive  Courtship 

(1)  Capture  . 

(2)  Purchase  .  ;."  ' 

(3)  Service   .        '  .' .  ' 
Individual  Preference      .  . 
Personal  Beaiity  and  Sexual  Selection 
Jealousy  and  Polygamy  .          .._" . 
Monopoly  and  Monogamy  '         » 
Primitive  Coyness 

Can  American  Negroes  Love  ? 
HISTORY  OF  LOVE 
LOVE  IN  EGYPT 
ANCIENT  HEBREW  LOVE        . 
ANCIENT  ARYAN  LOVE          * 

Hindoo  Love  Maxims      .  * 

GREEK  LOVE  ...» 

Family  Affection 

No  Love  Stories  .  .  , 

Woman's  Position  .  . 

Chaperonage  versus  Courtship 

Plato  on  Courtship  .  « 

Parental  versus  Lovers'  Choice    , 

The  Hetsera 

Platonic  Love      . 

Sappho  and  Female  Friendship  .' 

Greek  Beauty 

Cupid's  Arrows    .  .  . 

Origin  of  Love     .  .  . 

ROMAN  LOVE  .  .  • 

Woman's  Position  .  » 

No  Wooing  and  Choice ' . 

Virgil,  Dryden,  and  Scott  . 

Ovid's  Art  of  Making  Love 

Birth  of  Gallantry  .  . 

MEDIEVAL  LOVE       .  .  . 

Celibacy  versus  Marriage  . 

Woman's  Lowest  Degradation     . 


CONTENTS 

**• 

Negation  of  Feminine  Choice      .  .  .  .  :  : 

Christianity  and  Love      ...... 

Chivalry — Militant  and  Comic    ..... 

Chivalry — Poetic  .  .  .  .  .  .      .'  : 

(a)  French  Troubadours       ..... 

(b)  German  Minnesingers     .  .  .  .  . 

Female  Culture    ....... 

Personal  Beauty  ....... 

Spenser  on  Love  ....... 

Dante  and  Shakspere       .  .  .  .  .  . 

N  LOVE  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 

A  Biologic  Test   ....... 

Venus,  Flutus,  and  Minerva        ..... 

Leading  Motives .  .  .  .  .  .  .114 

Modern  Coyness  .  .  .    ' 

(1)  An  Echo  of  Capture        .  .  .  .  .      : 

(2)  Maiden  versus  Wife         ..... 

(3)  Modesty.  .  ... 

(4)  Cunning  to  Lo  Strange  .  .  .  .  .US 

(5)  Procrastination  ...... 

Goldsmith  on  Love  .  .  .  .  .  ,116 

Disadvantages  of  Coyness    ..... 

Coyness  lessens  "Woman's  Love        .... 

Masculine  versus  Feminine  Love     .  .  .  .1  '20 

Flirtation  and  Coquetry       ..... 

Flirtation  versus  Coyness     ..... 

Modern  Courtship    ...... 

Modern  Jealousy  ...... 

Lover's  Jealousy       ...... 

Retrospective  and  Prospective  Jealousy 

Jealousy  and  Beauty  ..... 

Monopoly  or  Exclusiveness  ..... 

True  Love  is  Transient         .  .  .  .  . 

Is  First  Love  Best  ? .  .  . 

Heine  on  First  Love  ..... 

First  Love  is  not  Best  ..... 
Pride  and  Vanity  ...... 

Coquetry      ....... 

Love  and  Eank        ...... 

Special  Sympathy  ...... 

How  Love  Intensifies  Emotions       .... 

Development  of  Sympathy  ..... 

Pity  and  Love 

Love  at  First  Sight 


viii  CONTENTS 

TPAOB 

Intellect  and  Love    .           ••            »  .  .  .154 

Gallantry  and  Self-Sacrifice         .            .  .  .  .157 

Active  and  Passive  Desire  to  Please  .  .  .159 

Feminine  Devotion  .            »-x           .  .  .  .160 

Emotional  Hyperbole      .            .            .  .  .  .162 

Mixed  Moods  and  Paradoxes       .            .  .  .  .166 

Lunatic,  Lover,  and  Poet     .             .  .  .  .172 

Individual  Preference     .             .            .  -.  "•        .  .     173 

Sexual  Divergence   .             .            .  .    ;        .  .     174 

Making  Woman  Masculine  .             .  .  .  .     173 

Love  and  Culture     .             .            .  .  .  .176 

Personal  Beauty  .            ,            .            .  .  .  .177 

Feminine  Beauty  in  Masculine  Eyes  .  .  .177 

Masculine  Beauty  in  Feminine  Eyes  .  .  .178 

CONJUGAL  AFFECTION  AND  ROMANTIC  LOVE  >.  .  .     ISO 

Romance  in  Conjugal  Love          ».''».  .  .  .     184 

.  Marriages  of  Reason  or  Love  Matches  ?  .  .  .  .187 

Marriage  Hints    .            .           -,            .  .  .  .     189 

OLD  MAIDS     .           .            .           •           »  .  .  .     190 

BACHELORS     .        '   .           .            .           .  .    '        .  .     194 

GENIUS  AND  MARRIAGK         .            .          -.    -  .  .  .     197 

GENIUS  AND  LOVE      .            .            •       •   V  .  .  .    201 

GENIUS  IN  LOVE        .           .        "  .           .  '.  .  .    204 

(1)  Precocity       .            .           ;.            .7 •  .  .  .204 

[2)  A:  n                             .          '  .          V  .  .  .     207 

;,    •-         .             .             .             .  210 

ity 213 

.            •.'          .            .  215 

INSANII  v  -  ND  LOVE  .           .            .           .           m'('-       .           .  218 

.  218 

Erotomania,  or  Real  Love-Sickness         .            .            .            .  222 

LANGUAGE  OF  LOVE       ......  223 

•            .            •             .            .            .  223 

if.  Facial  Expression     ......  224 

.  225 

KISSINO — PAST,  PRESENT,  AND  FUTURE       ....  227 

•           ....  227 

....  228 

.            .            .  229 

232 

.            .            .            .*  233 

234 

LoveKi^es        T.             .            .            .                                       ,  235 


CONTENTS  ix 

'  PAGE 

How  TO  WIN  LOVE  .  .  .  .  .  .  .238 

Brass  Buttons 238 

Confidence  and  Boldness  .....     239 

Pleasant  Associations      .  .  .  .  .  .240 

Perseverance        .  .  .  .  .  .  .241 

Feigned  Indifference        .  .  .  .  .  .241 

Compliments       .......     244 

Love  Letters        .  .  .  .  .  .  .246 

Love  Charms  for  Women  .....     250 

Proposing  .......     253 

Diagnosis,  or  Signs  of  Love  .....  254 

How  TO  CURE  LOVE  .......     255 

Absence  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  256 

Travel .257 

Employment       .  .  .  .  .  .257 

Married  Misery  .....  .257 

Feminine  Inferiority       ......     260 

Focussing  Her  Faults      ......     262 

Reason  versus  Passion     ......     263 

Love  versus  Love  .  .  .  .  .  .264 

Prognosis,  or  Chances  of  Recovery  ....  265 

NATIONALITY  AND  LOVE        .  .  .  .  .  .265 

French  Love        .  .  .  .  .  .  .266 

Italian  Love        .......     274 

Spanish  Love      .......     277 

German  Love       .......     280 

English  Love      .......     288 

American  Love  '.....  .  294 

SCHOPENHAUER'S  THEOET  or  LOVE  .....    301 

Love  is  an  Illusion          ......     302 

Individuals  Sacrificed  to  the  Species       .  .  .  .     302 

Sources  of  Love  .......  303 

(1)  Physical  Beauty  .  .  .  .  .303 

(2)  Psychic  Traits    .  .  .  .  .  .304 

(3)  Complementary  Qualities  ....     305 
FOUR  SOURCES  OF  BEAUTY    ......    310 

i.  Health          ,  .  .  .  .  .  .310 

Greek  Beauty       .  .  .  .  .  .313 

Mediaeval  Ugliness  • .  .  .  .  .314 

Modern  Hygiene  .  .  .  ,  .  .316 

ir.  Crossing       .......     318 

in.  Romantic  Love         ......     322 

iv.  Mental  Refinement  ......     324 

EVOLUTION  «F  TASTS  327 


xii  CONTENTS 

PACK 

Lustre      .            .            .            .            .  .  .  .469 

Form        ........     472 

Expression           .            ;            .            .  .  .  .475 

(a)  Lustre    .                        .            .  .  .  .476 

(&)  Colour  of  Iris 478 

(c)  Movements  of  the  Iris    .....     479 

(d)  „             „       Eyeball          .  480 

(e)  „             „       Eyelids          .  .  .  .482 
(/)          „             „       Eyebrows      .  .  .  .485 

Cosmetic  Hints    .            .            .            i   •  .  .  .485 

THE  HAIH      .           .            .                       .  .  .  .486 

Cause  of  Man's  Nudity    .            '.            .  .  .  .486 

Beards  and  Moustaches  .                         .  .  .  .     489 

Baldness  and  Depilatories         '*.'"'•.  .  .  .492 

^Esthetic  Value  of  Hair  .            \           V  .  .  .     494 

BRUNETTE  AND  BLONDE       .          '.          *.  .  .  .496 

Blonde  versus  Brunette  .            ,           V  .  •  .     496 

Brunette  versus  Blonde               V           •  •  498 
Why  Cupid  Favours  Brunettes   .....     499 

NATIONALITY  AND  BEAUTY            *.           .  .  .  .    505 

FRENCH  BEAUTY       .           .          Y          V  .  .  ,506 

ITALIAN  BEAUTY      .           .           .           .  .  .  .511 

SPANISH  BEAUTY      .           .           .           .  .  .  .515 

GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  BEAUTY    .           .  .  .  .    522 

ENGLISH  BEAUTY      .           .           .           .  .  .  .    528 

AMERICAN  BEAUTY  .  535 


ROMANTIC  LOVE  &  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 


EVOLUTION  OF  ROMANTIC  LOVE 

OP  all  the  rhetorical  commonplaces  in  literature  and  conversation, 
none  is  more  frequently  repeated  than  the  assertion  that  Love,  as 
depicted  in  a  thousand  novels  and  poems  every  year,  has  existed 
at  all  times,  and  in  every  country,  immutable  as  the  mountains 
and  the  stars. 

Only  a  few  months  ago  one  of  the  leading  German  writers  of 
the  period,  Ernst  Eckstein,  wrote  an  essay  in  which  he  endeavoured 
to  prove  that  not  only  was  Love  as  felt  by  the  ancient  Komans 
the  same  as  modern  Love,  but  that  it  was  identical  with  the 
modern  sentiment  even  in  its  minutest  details  and  manifestations. 
He  based  this  bold  inference  on  the  fact  that  in  Ovid's  Ars  Amoris 
directions  are  given  to  the  men  regarding  certain  tricks  of  gallantry 
— such  as  dusting  the  adored  one's  seat  at  the  circus,  fanning  her, 
applauding  her  favourites,  and  drinking  from  the  cup  where  it  was 
touched  by  her  lips. 

Curious  and  interesting  these  hints  are,  no  doubt.  But  a  closer 
examination  of  Roman  literature  and  manners  shows  that  Dr. 
Eckstein  has  been  guilty  of  the  common  blunder  of  generalising 
from  a  single  instance.  Gallantry  is  one  of  the  essential  traits  of 
modern  Love ;  and  far  from  having  been  a  common  practice  in 
ancient  Rome,  the  interest  of  Ovid's  remarks  lies  in  the  fact  that 
they  give  us  the  first  instance  on  record  of  an  attempt  at  gallant 
behaviour  on  the  part  of  the  men;  as  will  be  shown  in  detail  in 
the  chapter  on  Roman  Love. 

And  as  with  Gallantly,  so  with  the  other  traits  which  make  up 
the  group  of  emotions  known  to  us  as  Love.  We  look  for  them  in 
vain  among  modern  savages,  in  vain  among  the  ancient  civilised 
nations.  Romantic  Love  is  a  modern  sentiment,  less  than  a 
thousand  years  old. 

S>  B 


2  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Conjugal  Love  is,  indeed,  often  celebrated  by  Greek,  Hebrew, 
and  other  ancient  writers,  but  regarding  Romantic — or  pro-matri- 
monial— Love  (which  alone  forms  the  theme  of  our  novelists),  they 
are  silent.  The  Bible  takes  no  account  of  it,  and  although  Greek 
literature  and  mythology  seem  at  first  sight  to  abound  in  allusions 
to  it,  critical  analysis  shows  that  the  reference  never  is  to  Love  as 
we  understand  it.  Greek  Love,  as  will  be  shown  hereafter,  was  a 
peculiar  mixture  of  friendship  and  passion,  differing  widely  from 
the  modern  sentiment  of  Love. 

It  is  because  among  the  Romans  the  position  of  woman  was 
somewhat  more  elevated  and  modern  than  among  the  Greeks,  that 
we  find  in  Roman  literature  a  vague  foreshadowing  of  some  of  the 
elements  of  modern  Love. 

In  the  Dark  Ages  there  is  a  relapse.  The  germs  of  Love  could 
not  flourish  in  a  period  when  women  were  kept  in  brutal  subjection 
by  the  men,  and  their  minds  refused  all  nourishment  and  refine- 
ment. The  Troubadours  of  Italy  and  France  proved  useful 
champions  of  woman,  as  did  the  German  Minnesingers,  by  teaching 
the  medieval  military  man  to  look  upon  her  with  sentiments  of 
respect  and  adoration.  Yet  their  conduct  rarely  harmonised  with 
their  preaching;  and  the  cause  of  Romantic  Love  gained  little  by 
their  poetic  effusions,  which  were  almost  invariably  addressed  to 
married  women. 

Not  till  Dante's  Vita  Nuova  appeared  was  the  gospel  of  modern 
Love — the  romantic  adoration  of  a  maiden  by  a  youth — revealed  for 
the  first  time  in  definite  language.  Genius,  however,  is  always  in 
advance  of  its  age,  in  emotions  as  well  as  in  thoughts;  and  the 
feelings  experienced  by  Dante  were  obviously  not  shared  by  his 
contemporaries,  who  found  them  too  subtle  and  sublimated  for 
their  comprehension.  And,  in  fact,  they  were  too  ethereal  to  quite 
correspond  with  reality.  The  strings  of  Dante's  lyre  were  strung 
too  high,  and  touched  by  his  magic  hand,  gave  forth  harmonic 
overtones  too  celestial  for  mundane  ears  to  hear. 

It  remained  for  ShaLopere  to  combine  the  idealism  with  the 
realism  of  Love  in  proper  proportions.  The  colours  with  which  he 
painted  the  passion  and  sentiment  of  modem  Love  are  as  fresh 
and  as  true  to  life  as  on  the  day  when  they  were  first  put  on  his 
canvas.  Like  Dante,  however,  he  was  emotionally  ahead  of  his 
time,  as  an  examination  of  contemporary  literature  in  England  and 
elsewhere  shows.  But  within  the  last  two  centuries  Love  has 
gradually,  if  slowly,  assumed  among  all  educated  people  character- 
istics which  formerly  it  possessed  only  in  the  minds  of  a  few 
isolated  men  of  genius. 


COSMIC  ATTRACTION  AND  CHEMICAL  AFFINITIES         3 

Before  we  proceed  to  prove  all  these  assertions  in  detail,  it  will 
be  well  to  cast  a  brief  glance  at  the  analogies  to  human  Love 
presented  by  cosmic,  chemical,  and  vegetal  phenomena;  as  well  as 
to  distinguish  Roman  tic  Love  from  other  forms  of  human  and 
animal  affection.  This  will  enable  us  to  comprehend  more  clearly 
what  modern  Love  is,  by  making  apparent  what  it  is  not. 

COSMIC  ATTRACTION  AND  CHEMICAL  AFFINITIES 

It  is  a  favourite  device  of  poets  to  invest  plants  and  even 
inanimate  objects  with  human  thoughts  and  feelings.  The 
parched,  withering  flower,  tormented  by  the  pangs  of  thirst, 
implores  the  passing  cloud  for  a  few  drops  of  the  vital  fluid ;  and 
the  cloud,  moved  to  pity  at  sight  of  the  suffering  beauty,  sheds  its 
welcome,  soothing  tears. 

"  And  'tis  my  faith,  that  every  flower 
Enjoys  the  air  it  breathes." — WORDSWORTH. 

"  The  moon  shines  bright :  in  such  a  night  as  this, 
When  the  sweet  wind  did  gently  kiss  the  trees, 
And  they  did  make  no  noise." 

"  Purple  the  sails,  and  so  perfumed  that 
The  winds  were  love-sick  with  them."— SHAKSPERE. 

One  of  the  first  authors  who  thus  endowed  non-human  objects 
with  human  feelings  was  the  Greek  philosopher  Empedokles,  who 
flourished  about  twenty-three  centuries  ago.  Just  as  the  last  of 
the  great  German  metaphysicians,  Schopenhauer,  believed  that  all 
the  forces  of  Nature — astronomic,  chemical,  biological,  etc. — are 
identical  with  the  human  Will,  of  which  they  represent  different 
stages  of  development  or  "  objectivation,"  so  Empedokles  insisted 
that  the  two  ruling  passions  of  the  human  soul,  Love  and  Hate, 
are  the  two  principles  which  pervade  and  rule  the  whole  universe. 
In  the  primitive  condition  of  things,  he  taught,  the  four  elements, 
Earth,  Water,  Air.  and  Fire  are  mingled  harmoniously,  and  Love 
rules  supreme.  Then  Hate  intervenes  and  produces  individual, 
separate  forms.  Plants  are  developed,  and  after  them  animals,  or 
rather,  at  first,  only  single  organs — detached  eyes,  arms,  hands, 
etc.  Then  Love  reasserts  its  force  and  unites  these  separate  organs 
into  complete  animals.  Strange  monstrosities  are  the  result  of 
some  of  these  unions — animals  of  double  sex,  human  heads  on  the 
bodies  of  oxen,  or  horned  heads  on  the  bodies  of  men.  These, 
however,  perish,  while  others,  which  are  congruous  and  adapted 
to  their  surroundings,  survive  and  multiply. 


4  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Thus  Empedokles,  "  the  Greek  Darwin,"  was  the  originator  of 
a  theory  of  evolution  based  on  the  alternate  predominance  of 
cosmic  Love  and  Hate;  Love  being  the  attractive,  Hate  the  re- 
pulsive force. 

In  the  preface  to  the  first  volume  of  Don  Quixote,  Cervantes 
refers  those  who  wish  to  acquire  some  information  concerning  Love 
to  an  Italian  treatise  by  Judah  Leo.  The  full  title  of  the  book, 
which  appeared  in  Rome  in  the  sixteenth  century,  is  Dialoghi  di 
amore,  Composti  da  Leone  Medico,  di  nazione  Ebreo,  e  di  poi 
fatto  cristiano.  There  are  said  to  be  three  French  translations  of 
it,  but  it  was  only  after  long  searching  that  I  succeeded  in  finding 
a  copy,  at  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale  in  Paris.  It  proved  to  be  a 
strange  medley  of  astrology,  metaphysics,  theology,  classical  erudi- 
tion, mythology,  and  mediaeval  science.  Burton,  in  the  chapter 
on  Love,  in  his  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  quotes  freely  from  this 
work  of  Leo,  whom  he  names  as  one  of  about  twenty-five  authors 
who  wrote  treatises  on  Love  in  ancient  and  mediaeval  times. 

Like  Empedokles,  Leo  identifies  cosmic  attraction  with  Love. 
But  he  points  out  three  degrees  of  Love — Natural,  Sensible,  and 
Rational. 

By  Natural  Love  he  means  those  "  sympathies  "  which  attract  a 
stone  to  the  earth,  make  rivers  flow  to  the  sea,  keep  the  sun,  moon, 
and  stars  in  their  courses,  etc.  Burton  (1652)  agrees  with  Leo, 
and  asks  quaintly,  "How  comes  a  loadstone  to  draw  iron  to  it  .  .  . 
the  ground  to  covet  showers,  but  for  love?  ...  no  stock, 
no  stone,  that  has  not  some  feeling  of  love.  'Tis  more 
eminent  in  Plants,  Hearbs,  and  is  especially  observed  in  vegetals ; 
as  betwixt  the  Vine  and  Elm  a  great  sympathy,"  etc. 

"  Sensible  "  Love  is  that  which  prevails  among  animals.  In  it 
Leo  recognises  the  higher  elements  of  delight  in  one  another's 
company,  and  of  attachment  to  a  master. 

"Rational"  Love,  the  third  and  highest  class,  is  peculiar  to 
God,  angels,  and  men. 

But  the  inclination  to  confound  gravitation  and  other  natural 
forces  with  Love  is  not  to  be  found  among  ancient  and  mediaeval 
authors  alone.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  it  is  the  "gross 
materialist,"  Dr.  Ludwig  Biichner,  who  exclaims  rapturously:  "For 
it  is  love,  in  the  form  of  attraction,  which  chains  stone  to  stone, 
earth  to  earth,  star  to  star,  and  which  holds  together  the  mighty 
edifice  on  which  we  stand,  and  on  the  surface  of  which,  like 
parasites,  we  carry  on  our  existence,  barely  noticeable  in  the  infinite 
universe;  and  on  which  we  shall  continue  to  exist  till  that  distant 
period  when  its  component  parts  will  again  be  resolved  into  that 


COSMIC  ATTRACTION  AND  CHEMICAL  AFFINITIES         5 

primal  chaos  from  which  it  laboriously  severed  itself  millions  of 
years  ago,  and  became  a  separate  planet." 

Biiclmer  carries  on  this  anthropopathic  process  a  step  farther, 
by  including  all  the  chemical  affinities  of  atoms  and  molecules  as 
manifestations  of  love :  "  Just  as  man  and  woman  attract  one 
another,  so  oxygen  attracts  hydrogen,  and,  in  loving  union  with  it, 
forms  water,  that  mighty  omnipresent  element,  without  which  no 
life  nor  thought  would  be  possible."  And  again :  "  Potassium 
and  phosphorus  entertain  such  a  violent  passion  for  oxygen  that 
even  under  water  they  burn — i.e.  unite  themselves  with  the 
beloved  object." 

Goethe's  novel,  Elective  Affinities,  which  was  inspired  by  a  late 
and  hopeless  passion  of  its  author,  is  based  on  this  chemical  notion 
that  no  physical  obstacle  can  separate  two  souls  that  are  united  by 
an  amorous  affinity.  But  the  practical  outcome  of  his  theory — 
that  the  psychic  affinity  of  two  persons  suffices  to  impress  the 
characteristics  of  both  on  the  offspring  of  one  of  them — has  nothing 
to  support  it  in  medical  experience ;  while  the  chemical  analogy, 
with  all  due  deference  to  Goethe's  reputation  as  a  man  of  science, 
is  against  his  view.  His  notion  was  that  the  children  of  two  souls 
loving  one  another  will  inherit  their  characteristics.  But  what 
distinguishes  a  chemical  compound  (based  on  "  affinity ")  from  a 
mere  physical  mixture,  is  precisely  the  contrary  fact  that  the  com- 
pound does  not  in  any  respect  resemble  the  parental  elements ! 
Read  what  a  specialist  says  in  Watts's  Dictionary  of  Chemistry  : — 

"Definite  chemical  compounds  generally  differ  altogether  in 
physical  properties  from  their  components.  Thus,  with  regard 
to  colour,  yellow  sulphur  and  gray  mercury  produce  red  cinnabar ; 
purple  iodine  and  gray  potassium  yield  colourless  iodide  of  potas- 
sium. .  .  .  The  density  of  a  compound  is  very  rarely  an  exact 
mean  between  that  of  its  constituents,  being  generally  higher,  and 
in  a  few  cases  lower ;  and  the  taste,  smell,  refracting  power,  fusi- 
bility, volatility,  conducting  power  for  heat  and  electricity,  and 
other  physical  properties,  are  not  for  the  most  part  such  as  would 
result  from  mere  mixture  of  their  constituents." 

Chemical  affinities,  accordingly,  cannot  be  used  as  analogies  of 
Love.  Not  even  on  account  of  the  violent  individual  preference 
shown  by  two  elements  for  one  another,  for  this  apparently  indi- 
vidual preference  is  really  only  generic.  A  piece  of  phosphorus 
will  as  readily  unite  with  one  cubic  foot  of  oxygen  as  with 
another ;  whereas  it  is  the  very  essence  of  Love  that  it  demands  a 
union  with  one  particular  individual,  and  no  other. 

Equally  unsatisfactory  are  all  similar  attempts  to  identify  Love 


6  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

with  gravitation  or  other  forms  of  cosmic  attraction.  Here  is 
what  a  great  expert  in  Love  has  to  say  on  this  subject :  "  The 
attraction  of  love,  I  find,"  writes  Bums,  "  is  in  inverse  proportion 
to  the  attraction  of  the  Newtonian  philosophy.  In  the  system  of 
Sir  Isaac,  the  nearer  objects  are  to  one  another,  the  stronger  is  the 
attractive  force.  In  my  system,  every  milestone  that  marked 
my  progress  from  Clarinda  awakened  a  keener  pang  of  attachment 
to  her." 

How  beautifully,  in  other  respects,  does  the  law  of  gravitation 
simulate  the  methods  of  Love !  Does  not  the  meteor  which 
passionately  falls  on  this  planet  and  digs  a  deep  hole  into  it,  show 
its  love  in  this  manner,  even  as  that  affectionate  bear  who  smashed 
his  master's  forehead  in  order  to  kill  the  fly  on  it  ?  Does  not  the 
avalanche  which  thunders  down  the  mountain-side  and  buries  a 
whole  forest  and  several  villages,  afford  another  touching  illustra- 
tion of  the  love  of  attraction,  or  cosmic  Love  1 — a  crushing  argu- 
ment in  its  favour1?  Or  the  frigid  glacier,  in  its  slower  course, 
does  it  not  lacerate  the  sides  of  the  valley,  and  strew  about  its 
precious  boulders,  merely  by  way  of  illustrating  the  amorous  effect 
of  gravitation  ?  And  millions  of  years  hence,  will  not  this  same  law 
of  attraction  enable  the  sun  to  prove  his  ecstatic  love  for  our  earth 
by  swallowing  her  up  and  reducing  her  to  her  primitive  chaotic 
state  *?  Imagine  a  man  and  a  woman  whose  love  consists  in  this, 
that  they  must  be  kept  widely  separated  by  a  hostile  force  to  pre- 
vent them  from  dashing  together,  and  reducing  each  other  to  atoms 
and  molecules  !  That  is  the  "  love  "  of  the  stars  and  planets. 

But  it  is  needless  to  continue  this  reditctio  ad  dbsurdum  of 
pantheistic  or  panerotic  vagaries.  The  method  of  the  writers  on 
Love  here  quoted — Empedokles,  Leo,  Burton,  Biichner — has  been 
to  identify  Love  with  cosmic  force  simply  because  they  possess  in 
common  the  one  quality  of  attraction,  by  virtue  of  which  the  large 
earth  hugs  a  small  stone,  and  a  large  man  a  small  maiden. 
Modern  scientific  psychology  objects  to  this  (i.e.  not  the  hugging, 
but  the  method),  because  it  does  not  in  the  least  aid  us  in  under- 
standing the  nature  of  Love ;  and  because  it  is  as  irrational  to  call 
attraction  Love  as  it  would  be  to  call  a  brick  a  house,  a  leaf  a  tree, 
or  a  green  daub  a  rainbow.  For  Love  embraces  every  colour  in 
the  spectrum  of  human  emotion. 

Having  failed  to  find  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  mystery  of 
Lo\  e  in  the  inorganic  world,  let  us  now  see  if  the  vegetable  king- 
dom offers  no  better  analogies  in  its  sexual  phenomena. 


FLOWER  LOVE  AND  BEAUTY 


FLOWER  LOVE  AND  BEAUTY 

Until  a  few  decades  ago,  it  was  the  universal  belief  that  flowers 
had  been  specially  created  for  man's  exclusive  delight.  This  was 
such  an  uasy  way,  you  know,  to  overcome  the  difficulty  of  explain- 
ing the  immense  variety  of  forms  and  colours  in  the  floral  world ; 
and  it  was,  above  all,  so  flattering  to  man's  egregious  vanity.  But 
one  fine  morning  in  May  a  German  naturalist,  Conrad  Sprengel, 
published  a  remarkable  book  in  which  he  pointed  out  that  flowers 
owe  their  peculiar  shape,  colour,  and  fragrance  to  the  visits  of 
insects.  Not  that  the  insects  visit  the  flowers  in  order  to  shape 
and  paint  and  perfume  them.  On  the  contrary,  they  visit  them  for 
the  unjesthetic  purpose  of  eating  their  pollen  and  their  honey ;  while 
the  flowers'  scent  and  colour  exist  solely  for  the  purpose  of  indicating 
to  winged  insects  at  a  distance  where  they  can  find  a  savoury  lunch. 

But  why  should  flowers  take  such  pains  to  attract  insects  by 
serving  them  with  a  breakfast  of  honey,  and  by  hanging  out  big 
petals  to  serve  as  coloured  and  perfumed  signal-flags  ?  Nature  is 
economical  in  the  expenditure  of  energy ;  and  as  the  production  of 
honey  and  large  flowers  costs  the  plant  some  of  its  vital  energies, 
we  may  be  sure  that  this  expenditure  secures  the  plant  some 
superior  advantage.  Sprengel  noticed  that  the  insects,  while 
pillaging  flowers  of  their  honey,  unwittingly  brushed  off  with  their 
wings  and  feet  some  of  the  fertilising  dust  or  pollen,  and  carried  it 
to  the  pistil  or  female  part  of  a  flower.  But  it  remained  for 
Darwin  to  point  out  what  advantage  this  transference  of  the 
pollen  secured  to  the  flower.  Darwin,  says  Sir  John  Lubbock, 
"  was  the  first  clearly  to  perceive  that  the  essential  service  which 
insects  perform  to  flowers  consists  not  only  in  transferring  the 
pollen  from  the  stamens  to  the  pistil,  but  in  transferring  it  from 
the  stamens  of  one  flower  to  the  pistil  of  another.  Sprengel  had 
indeed  observed  in  more  than  one  instance  that  this  was  the  case, 
but  he  did  not  altogether  appreciate  the  importance  of  the  fact. 
Mr.  Darwin,  however,  has  not  only  made  it  clear  from  theoretical 
considerations,  but  has  also  proved  it,  in  a  variety  of  cases,  by 
actual  experiment.  More  recently  Fritz  Muller  has  even  shown 
that  in  some  cases  pollen,  if  placed  on  the  stigma  of  the  same 
flower,  has  no  more  effect  than  so  much  inorganic  dust  j  while,  and 
this  is  perhaps  even  more  extraordinary,  in  others,  the  pollen 
placed  on  the  stigma  of  the  same  flower  acted  on  it  like  poison  " — 
a  curious  analogy  to  the  current  belief  that  close  intermarriage  is 
injurious  to  mankind. 


8  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

What  Darwin  and  others  have  proved  by  their  experiments  ia 
that  cross-fertilised  flowers  are  more  vigorous  than  those  fertilised 
with  their  own  pollen,  and  have  a  more  healthy  and  numerous 
offspring.  With  this  fact  before  us  we  need  only  apply  the  usual 
evolutionary  formula  to  account  for  the  beauty  of  flowers.  It  is 
well  known  that  Nature  rarely,  if  ever,  produces  two  leaves  or 
plants  that  are  exactly  alike.  There  is  also  a  natural  tendency  in 
all  parts  of  a  plant  except  the  leaves  to  develop  other  colours 
besides  green.  Now  any  plant  which,  owing  to  chemical  causes, 
favourable  position,  etc.,  developed  an  unusually  brilliant  colour, 
would  be  likely  to  attract  the  attention  of  a  winged  insect  in  search 
of  pollen-food.  The  insect,  by  alighting  on  a  second  flower  soon 
after,  would  fertilise  it  with  the  pollen  of  the  first  flower  that 
adhered  to  its  limbs,  thus  securing  to  the  plant  the  advantages  of 
cross-fertilisation.  Thanks  to  the  laws  of  heredity,  this  advantage 
would  be  transmitted  to  the  young  plants,  among  which  again 
those  most  favoured  would  gain  an  advantage  and  a  more  numerous 
offspring.  And  thus  the  gradual  development  not  only  of  coloured 
petals,  but  of  scents  and  honey,  can  be  accounted  for. 

What  makes  this  argument  irresistible  is  the  additional  fact,  • 
first  pointed  out  by  Darwin,  that  plants  which  are  not  visited  by 
insects,  but  are  fertilised  by  the  agency  of  the  wind,  are  neither 
adorned  with  beautifully-coloured  flowers,  nor  provided  with  honey 
or  fragrance.  And  another  most  important  fact :  Darwin  found 
that  flowers  which  depend  on  the  wind  for  their  fertilisation  follow 
the  natural  tendency  of  objects  to  a  symmetrical  form ;  whereas 
the  irregular  flowers  are  always  those  fertilised  by  insects  or  birds. 
This  points  to  the  conclusion  that  insects  and  birds  are  responsible 
not  only  for  the  colours  and  fragrance  of  flowers,  but  also  for  the 
shape  of  those  that  are  most  unique  and  fantastic.  And  this  a 
priori  inference  is  borne  out  by  thousands  of  curious  and  most 
fascinating  observations  described  in  the  works  of  Darwin,  Lubbock, 
Mtiller,  and  many  others.  The  briefest  and  clearest  presentation 
of  the  subject  is  in  Lubbock's  Flowers,  Fruits,  and  Leaves,  which 
no  one  interested  in  natural  aesthetics  should  fail  to  read.  There 
is  indeed  no  more  interesting  study  in  biology  than  the  mutual 
adaptation  of  flowers,  bees,  butterflies,  humming-birds,  etc. ;  for 
just  as  these  animals  have  modified  the  forms  of  flowers,  so  the 
flowers  have  altered  the  shape  of  these  animals. 

Many  of  the  changes  in  the  shapes  of  flowers  are  made  not  only 
with  a  view  to  facilitate  the  visits  of  winged  insects,  but  also  for 
keeping  out  creeping  intruders,  such  as  ants,  which  are  very  fond 
of  honey,  but  which,  as  they  do  not  fly,  would  not  aid  the  cause  of 


FLOWER  LOVE  AND  BEAUTY  9 

cross-fertilisation.  Of  these  contrivances,  "  the  most  frequent  are 
the  interposition  of  chevaux  de  frise,  which  ants  cannot  penetrate, 
glutinous  surfaces  which  they  cannot  traverse,  slippery  slopes 
which  they  cannot  climb,  or  barriers  which  close  the  way." 

How  obtuse  are  those  who,  with  Ruskin  and  Emerson,  accuse 
science  of  destroying  the  poetry  of  nature  !  What  poetry  is  there 
in  the  thought  that  flowers  were  made  for  unaesthetic  man,  when 
not  one  man  in  a  thousand  ever  takes  the  trouble  to  examine  one, 
while  for  every  single  flower  on  which  a  human  eye  ever  rests,  a 
million  are  born  to  blush  unseen  ? 

But  if  we  abandon  the  narrow  anthropocentric  point  of  view, 
and  admit  that  insects  too  have  a  right  to  live,  how  the  scope  of 
Nature's  poetry  widens  !  How  easy  it  then  becomes  to  share  not 
only  Wordsworth's  belief  that  "every  flower  enjoys  the  air  it 
breathes,"  but  to  endow  it  with  a  thousand  thoughts  and  emotions 
like  our  own — delight  in  a  gaily-coloured  floral  envelope;  hope 
that  yonder  gaudy  butterfly  will  be  attracted  by  it ;  anxiety  lest 
that  "  horrid  "  ant  may  steal  some  of  its  honey ;  determination  to 
breathe  the  sweetest  perfume  on  this  darling  honey  bee,  so  as  to 
induce  it  to  speedily  call  again. 

Love  dramas,  too,  tragic  and  comic,  are  enacted  in  this  world 
of  flowers  and  insects.  Thus  the  Arum  plant  resorts  to  the  fol- 
lowing stratagem  to  secure  a  messenger  of  love  for  carrying  its 
pollen  to  a  distant  female  flower : — 

"  The  stigmas  come  to  maturity  first,  and  have  lost  the  possi- 
bility of  fertilisation  before  the  pollen  is  ripe.  The  pollen  must 
therefore  be  brought  by  insects,  and  this  is  effected  by  small  flies, 
which  enter  the  leaf,  either  for  the  sake  of  honey  or  of  shelter,  and 
which,  moreover,  when  they  have  once  entered  the  tube,  are 
imprisoned  by  the  fringe  of  hairs.  When  the  anthers  ripen,  the 
pollen  falls  on  to  the  flies,  which,  in  their  efforts  to  escape,  get 
thoroughly  dusted  with  it.  Then  the  fringe  of  hairs  withers,  and 
the  flies,  thus  set  free,  soon  come  out,  and  ere  long  carry  the  pollen 
to  another  plant "  (Lubbock). 

Then  there  are  male  flowers  which  go  a-courting  like  any 
amorous  swain  of  a  Sunday  night.  One  of  these  belongs  to  the 
Valisneria  plant,  concerning  which  the  same  writer  observes  that 
"  the  female  flowers  are  borne  on  long  stalks,  which  reach  to  the 
surface  of  the  water,  on  which  the  flowers  float.  The  male  flowers, 
on  the  contrary,  have  short,  straight  stalks,  from  which,  when 
mature,  the  pollen  detaches  itself,  rises  to  the  surface,  and,  floating 
freely  on  it,  is  wafted  about,  so  that  it  comes  in  contact  with  the 
female  flowers," 


10  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

But  alas  for  the  poor  flowers!  Few  of  them  are  thus  privileged 
to  roam  about  and  seek  their  own  bride.  Most  flowers  have  no 
more  free  choice  in  the  selection  of  their  spouse  than  an  Oriental 
or  a  French  girl.  There  is  no  previous  acquaintance,  no  courtship 
before  marriage,  hence  no  Romantic  Love,  even  if  the  undifferen- 
tiated  germs  of  nervous  protoplasm  in  the  plant  were  capable  of 
feeling  such  an  emotion. 

Poor  flowers !  Their  honeymoon  is  without  pleasure,  uncon- 
scious. The  wind  may  woo,  the  butterfly  caress  them — but  the 
wind  has  no  thought  of  the  flower,  and  the  insect's  attachment  is 
mere  "  cupboard  love."  The  beauty  of  one  flower  cannot  exist  for 
another  which  has  no  eyes  to  see  it ;  its  honey  and  its  fragrance 
are  not  for  a  floral  lover's  delight,  but  for  a  gastronomic  insect's 
epicurean  use.  No  modest  coyness,  no  harmless  flirtation,  no 
gallant  devotion  and  self-sacrifice,  enter  into  the  flower's  sexual 
life;  not  even  the  bitter-sweet  pangs  of  jealousy,  for,  as  Heine  has 
ascertained,  "  the  butterfly  stops  not  to  ask  the  flower,  *  Has  any 
one  kissed  thee  before  ? '  nor  does  the  flower  ask,  '  Hast  thou 
already  flitted  about  another?*" 

Thus  "  flower-love,"  with  all  its  poetic  analogies,  has  none  of. 
the  elements  of  Romantic  Love.  Even  attraction  fails,  for  plants 
axe  commonly  sessile,  and  cannot  go  forth  to  seek  a  mate. 

"  I  prayed  the  flowers, 
Oh,  tell  me,  what  is  love  ? 
Only  a  fragrant  sigh  was  wafted 
Thro'  the  night." — German  Song. 

Two  important  lessons  of  this  chapter  should,  however,  be 
carefully  borne  in  mind;  for  though  our  search  for  Love  has 
so  far  yielded  only  negative  results,  some  light  has  been  thrown  on 
the  general  laws  of  Beauty  in  Nature.  The  lessons  are  : — 

(1)  That  there  is  in  flowers  a  natural  tendency  towards  Sym- 
metry of  Form,  all  normal  irregularities  being  due  to  the  agency 
of  insects  and  birds. 

(2)  That  the  superior  Beauty  of  one  flower  over  another  is  due 
to  its  superior  vitality  or  Health,  which,  again,  is  promoted  by 
cross- fertilisation  or  intermarriage — the  choosing  of  a  mate  not  in 
the  same  but  in  another  flower-bed. 

Regarding  the  beauty  of  flowers  a  further  detail  may  be  added. 
Some  of  the  coloured  lines  on  flowers  are  so  placed  as  to  guide  the 
visiting  bees  to  the  nectar  or  honey.  More  complicated  colour- 
patterns  probably  owe  their  existence  to  the  advantage  of  having 
an  easy  means  of  recognition  at  a  distance.  It  is  well  known  that 


IMPERSONAL  AFFECTION  11 

bees  on  any  single  expedition  visit  the  flowers  of  one  species  only. 
Now  it  has  been  experimentally  proved  by  Lubbock  that  bees 
can  distinguish  different  colours;  and,  if  we  may  judge  by  analogy 
with  the  human  eye,  they  can  distinguish  colours  at  a  greater 
distance  than  forms.  Hence  the  advantage  to  each  flower  of 
having  its  own  colours  in  its  flag. 

IMPERSONAL  AFFECTION 

From  the  sexual  life  of  plants  we  ought  to  pass  on  to  that  of 
animals;  but  before  doing  so,  it  will  be  advisable  to  ascertain 
clearly  what  is  meant  by  Romantic  Love,  and  how  it  differs  from 
other  forms  of  affection,  impersonal  and  personal;  from  the  love  for 
inanimate  objects  and  for  plants  aud  animals;  from  the  family 
affections — maternal,  paternal,  filial,  brotherly,  and  sisterly  love; 
from  friendship;  and  from  conjugal  love. 

Love  is  the  most  attractive  word  in  the  language,  as  Heine  and 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  have  remarked.  Out  of  every  half-dozen 
novels  one  is  likely  to  have  the  word  Love  in  its  title,  as  a  bait 
sure  to  catch  readers.  But  whereas  novelists  always  use  this  word 
in  the  sense  of  Romantic  or  pre-matrimonial  Love,  in  common 
language  it  is  vaguely  used  as  a  synonym  for  any  kind  of  attach- 
ment, from  that  of  Romeo  to  the  schoolgirl  who  "just  loves 
caramels."  For  the  verb  to  love  there  is  perhaps  no  satisfactory 
and  equally  comprehensive  substitute;  but  in  place  of  the  noun 
love  it  is  advisable,  at  least  in  a  scientific  work,  to  use  the  word 
Affection,  which  comprehends  every  form  of  love  mentioned  above. 
In  the  present  work  Love,  with  a  capital  L,  always  means  Romantic 
Love. 

Professor  Calderwood,  in  his  Handbook  of  Moral  Philosophy, 
says  that  "  Affection  is  inclination  towards  others,  disposing  us  to 
give  from  our  own  resources  what  may  influence  them  either  for 
good  or  ill.  In  practical  tendency,  the  Affections  are  the  reverse 
of  the  Desires.  Desires  absorb,  Affections  give  out.  Affections 
presuppose  a  recognition  of  certain  qualities  in  persons,  and,  in  a 
modified  degree,  in  lower  sentient  beings,  but  not  in  things,  for  the 
exercise  of  Affection  presupposes  in  the  object  of  it  the  possibility 
either  of  harmony  or  antagonism  of  feeling." 

In  other  words,  the  eminent  Scotch  moralist  thinks  we  can 
entertain  affections  only  towards  human  beings,  and,  to  some 
degree,  towards  animals;  but  not  towards  plants  or  inanimate 
objects.  Careful  analysis  of  our  emotions,  however,  does  not  sus- 
tain this  distinction,  which  is  as  unpoetic  as  it  is  anthropocentric 


12  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

and  unscientific.  Dr.  Calderwood  obviously  confounds  affection 
with  sympathy.  Sympathy  means  literally  to  suffer  with  another, 
or  to  share  his  feelings;  and  this,  indeed,  "presupposes  in  the 
object  of  it  the  possibility  either  of  harmony  or  antagonism  of 
feeling."  But  affection,  in  his  own  words,  "gives  out,"  and  hence 
can  be  bestowed,  and  is  bestowed,  by  all  emotional  and  refined 
persons  on  a  variety  of  "things,"  that  are  neither  sentient  nor 
even  animate;  and  a  poetic  soul  will  even  feel  sympathy  with  such 
a  non-sentient  thing  as  a  crushed  flower,  for  his  imagination  uncon- 
sciously endows  it  with  the  requisite  feeling. 

"Things"  are  of  two  kinds — those  fashioned  by  man,  and 
those  produced  by  Nature.  A  poem,  a  symphony,  a  violin,  a 
novel  come  under  the  first  head ;  a  tree,  a  precious  metal,  a 
mountain  under  the  second.  An  author  who  has  passed  through 
the  whole  gamut  of  emotion  in  writing  his  book,  follows  its  fate 
with  a  paternal  pride  and  an  affectionate  anxiety  as  great  as  if  his 
bodily  child  had  been  sent  into  the  world  to  seek  its  fortune. 
Perhaps  the  story  of  the  German  soldier  who  was  carried  off  his 
feet  by  a  cannon-ball,  and  who  grasped  first  his  pipe  and  then  his 
severed  leg,  is  not  a  legend.  For  was  not  his  pipe,  like  a  good . 
friend,  associated  with  all  the  pleasant  hours  of  his  life?  An 
artist  certainly  can  entertain  for  his  favourite  instrument  an 
affection  almost,  if  not  quite,  human  in  quality.  When  Ole  Bull 
suffered  shipwreck  on  the  Mississippi,  he  swam  ashore,  holding  his 
violin  high  above  water,  at  the  risk  of  his  life.  And  to  an 
amateur  who  has  often  called  upon  his  pianoforte  to  feed  his 
momentary  mood  with  a  nocturne  or  a  scherzo,  the  instrument 
soon  assumes  the  functions  of  "  a  true  friend,  to  whom,"  as  Bacon 
would  say,  "  you  may  impart  griefs,  joys,  fears,  hopes,  suspicions, 
counsels,  and  whatever  lieth  upon  the  heart  to  oppress  it,  in  a 
kind  of  civil  shrift  or  confession." 

As  for  "  things "  not  produced  by  man,  who  that  has  ever 
spent  a  summer  in  Switzerland  is  not  quite  willing  to  believe  the 
legend  of  the  Swiss  Heimweh — the  exiled  mountaineer's  remini- 
scent longing  and  affection  for  his  native  haunts,  which  causes  him 
to  die  of  a  broken  heart,  even  if  wife  and  children  accompany  him 
in  his  exile  ?  His  feelings  are  not  identical  with  the  aesthetic 
admiration  of  a  tourist ;  for  these  imply  a  certain  degree  of  novelty 
and  artistic  perception  foreign  to  his  mind.  They  are  true 
impersonal  affection  for  the  snowy  summits,  sluggish  glaciers, 
azure  lakes,  chasing  clouds  coyly  playing  hide-and-seek  with  the 
scenery  below ;  the  balmy  breezes,  and  boisterous  storm-winds  ; 
the  green  slopes  studded  with  cows,  whose  welcome  chimes  alone 


IMPERSONAL  AFFECTION  13 

interrupt  the  sublime  silence  of  the  Alpine  summits.  For  these 
sounds  and  scenes  are  so  interwoven  with  all  his  experiences, 
thoughts,  and  associations,  that  he  cannot  live  and  be  happy 
without  them  in  a  foreign  land. 

The  attitude  of  an  aesthetically-refined  visitor  is  thus  expressed 
by  Byron  :  "I  live  not  in  myself,  but  I  become  portion  of  that 
around  me  ;  and  to  me  high  mountains  are  a  feeling  " — a  poetic 
anticipation  of  Schopenhauer's  doctrine,  that  for  true  aesthetic 
enjoyment  it  is  necessary  that  the  percipient  subject  be  completely 
merged  in  the  perceived  object, — the  personal  man  and  the 
impersonal  mountain  becoming  one  and  indistinguishable. 

Like  Romantic  Love,  the  affection  for  the  grander  aspects  of 
Nature  appears  to  be  essentially  a  modern  sentiment.  The 
Greeks,  as  has  often  been  pointed  out,  had  little  regard  for  the 
impersonal  beauties  of  Nature ;  and  to  make  the  forests,  brooks, 
and  mountains  attractive  to  the  popular  mind  the  poets  had  to 
people  them  with  personal  beauties ;  with  nymphs  and  dryads  and 


The  latest  phase  of  the  modern  passion  for  impersonal  nature 
includes  even  its  most  dismal  and  awe-inspiring  aspects,  with  an 
ecstatic  predilection  that  would  have  seemed  incomprehensible  to 
an  ancient  Greek.  This  phase  has  been  thus  beautifully  described 
by  Ruskin  :  "  There  is  a  sense  of  the  material  beauty,  both  of 
inanimate  nature,  the  lower  animals,  and  human  beings,  which  in 
the  iridescence,  colour-depth,  and  morbid  (I  use  the  word 
deliberately)  mystery  and  softness  of  it — with  other  qualities 
indescribable  by  any  single  words,  and  only  to  be  analysed  by 
extreme  care — is  found  to  the  full  only  in  five  men  that  I  know  of 
in  modern  times ;  namely,  Rousseau,  Shelley,  Byron,  Turner,  and 
myself,  differing  totally  and  in  the  entire  group  of  us  from  the 
delight  in  clear-struck  beauty  of  Angelico  and  the  Trecentisti,  and 
separated,  much  more  singularly,  from  the  cheerful  joys  of 
Chaucer,  Shakspere,  and  Scott,  by  its  unaccountable  affection  for 
'  Rokkes  blok '  and  other  forms  of  terror  and  power,  such  as  those 
of  the  ice-oceans,  which  to  Shakspere  were  only  Alpine  rheum  ; 
and  the  Via  Malas  and  Diabolic  Bridges  which  Dante  would  have 
condemned  none  but  lost  souls  to  climb  or  cross, — all  this  love  of 
impending  mountains,  coiled  thunderclouds,  and  dangerous  sea, 
being  joined  in  us  with  a  sulky,  almost  ferine,  love  of  retreat  in 
valleys  of  Charmettes,  gulphs  of  Spezzia,  ravines  of  Olympus,  low 
lodgings  in  Chelsea,  and  close  brushwood  at  Coniston." 

Ruskin  flatters  himself  if  he  still  imagines  he  is  the  sole  living 
possessor  of  this  feeling.  Though  there  is  much  hypocrisy  and 


14  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND"  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

guide-book-star-admiration  among  tourists,  there  are  yet  unques- 
tionably hundreds  who  enjoy  the  Via  Malas,  the  ice-oceans  and 
solitary  Swiss  valleys  they  visit ;  and  though  their  dismal  delight 
may  not  be  so  intense  as  Ruskin's,  it  is  yet  sufficient  to  indicate 
the  growth  of  a  general  affection  for  impersonal  nature  in  all  her 
moods,  whether  smiling  or  frowning. 

To  a  mind  that  can  thus  rise  above  human  associations  and 
utilities,  the  sublimest  thing  in  the  world  is  the  absolute  solitude 
of  an  Alpine  summit.  To  the  ignorant  peasant  the  harsh  cow- 
bell which  interrupts  this  silence  is  sweet  music,  because  it 
suggests  the  abodes  of  mankind ;  and  on  this  primitive  stage  of 
aesthetic  culture  Jeffrey  placed  himself  when  he  wrote  that,  "  It 
is  man,  and  man  alone,  that  we  see  in  the  beauties  of  the  earth 
which  he  inhabits." 

Inasmuch  as  mountain  solitudes  are  accessible  to  only  a  very 
small  proportion  of  mankind,  the  existence  of  true  impersonal 
affection  on  a  large  scale  can  be  more  easily  demonstrated  by 
recurring  for  a  moment  to  the  floral  world.  A  city  belle  is  apt  to 
look  upon  flowers  merely  from  a  social  or  military  point  of  view : 
the  more  bouquets,  the  more  evidence  of  admiration  and  conquest . 
of  male  hearts.  And  the  city  belle  can  hardly  be  blamed  for  this 
callousness  of  feeling ;  for  bunched  flowers  have  lost  as  much  of 
their  natural  charm  and  grace  as  butterflies  stuck  up  on  rows  of 
pins  in  a  museum.  But  watch  that  fair  gardener  in  a  suburban 
cottage  or  a  country  seat ;  how  she  recognises  every  individual 
plant,  every  single  flower,  as  a  friend  for  whose  comfort  she 
provides  with  all  the  affectionate  care  which  as  a  child  she 
lavished  on  her  doll.  If,  after  a  refreshing  shower,  the  flowers 
hold  up  their  heads  and  look  bright  and  happy,  her  face  reflects 
the  same  feeling ;  if  a  drouth  has  parched  them  and  dimmed  their 
lustre,  she  will  neglect  her  own  pleasures  to  bring  them  water, 
and  derive  from  this  charitable  action  the  same  sympathetic 
pleasure  as  if  they  had  been  so  many  suffering  human  beings. 
And  if  an  early  frost  kills  all  her  floral  friends,  her  sorrow  and 
despair  will  find  vent  in  a  flood  of  tears.  What  is  all  this  but 
affection — true  affection — though  flowers  be  but  "things,"  and 
not  "  sentient  beings." 

Obviously  Professor  Calderwood  erred  in  his  definition  of  affec- 
tion; for,  as  the  above  analysis  shows,  when  the  regard  for  an 
impersonal  object  rises  to  the  fervour  of  adoring  interest,  it  does 
not  specifically  differ  from  personal  affections  any  more  than,  for 
example,  maternal  love  differs  from  friendship.  Unemotional 
persons,  who  have  had  no  opportunities  to  cultivate  their  love  of 


IMPERSONAL  AFFECTION  15 

Nature,  may  feel  inclined  to  doubt  this ;  but  they  should  remem- 
ber that  just  as  there  is  an  intellectual  eminence  (Shakspere,  Kant, 
Wagner)  which  the  ignoraut  are  too  lazy  or  too  weak  to  climb,  so 
there  is  an  emotional  horizon,  beyond  which  those  only  can  see 
who  have  taken  the  trouble  to  ascend  the  summit  whence  a  wider 
scene  is  unfolded  to  the  view. 

From  one  point  of  view,  impersonal  affections  are  even  higher 
and  nobler  than  personal  attachments.  The  evolution  of  emotions 
has  been  but  little  studied,  but  so  much  is  apparent — that  there 
has  been  a  gradual  development  from  utilitarian  attachments  to 
those  that  are  less  utilitarian,  or  less  obviously  so.  Personal 
affections  are  too  often  exclusively  selfish  and  based  on  material  in- 
terests, as  the  loss  of  "friends,"  which  commonly  follows  the  loss  of 
wealth  or  position,  shows.  Whereas  impersonal  attachments  are  less 
apt  to  be  interested,  selfish,  and  fickle,  since  they  presuppose  more 
intellectual  power,  more  imagination,  more  refinement. 

Again,  although  it  must  be  admitted  that  man  is  the  crown 
and  compendium  of  Nature,  uniting  in  himself  most  of  the  excel- 
lences of  the  lower  kingdoms  with  others  exclusively  his  own ;  yet 
it  cannot  be  denied,  either,  that  the  vast  majority  of  these 
"crowns"  of  Nature  are  so  full  of  flaws  in  workmanship,  and 
have  lost  so  many  of  their  jewels,  that  the  sight  of  them  is  any- 
thing but  exhilarating.  Indeed,  it  is  obvious  that  the  average 
plant  and  the  average  animal  are,  in  their  way,  far  superior  to  the 
average  man,  in  beauty,  health,  vitality;  natural  selection,  -which 
has  been  arrested  in  man,  having  made  them  so.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  some  of  the  greatest  minds  have  turned  away  from 
mankind,  and  devoted  all  their  thoughts  and  energies  to  the 
world  of  "  things  "  and  ideas. 

Goethe  and  other  men  of  genius  have  often  been  accused  of  being 
cold  and  unsympathetic,  because  they  refused  to  shape  their  conduct 
so  as  to  please  the  people  with  whom  they  chanced  to  come  into 
contact.  Had  they  wasted  their  affections  and  sympathies  on  their 
commonplace  admirers  and  acquaintances,  instead  of  bestowing 
them  on  art  and  science,  on  the  great  ideas  that  teemed  in  their 
brains,  we  should  now  be  without  many  of  those  glorious  works 
which  could  never  have  been  created  had  not  their  authors  ignored 
personal  relations  for  the  time  being,  and  bestowed  all  their 
warmest  impersonal  affections  on  their  ideas. 

As  compared  with  men  of  genius,  women  have  achieved  but 
little  that  can  lay  claim  to  immortal  fame;  and  the  principal 
reason  of  this  is  that  their  affections  are  apt  to  be  too  exclusively 
personal.  A  girl  will  assiduously  practice  on  the  piano  as  long  as 


16  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

that  will  assist  her  in  fascinating  her  suitors.  But  how  many  women, 
outside  the  ranks  of  teachers,  continue  their  practice  after  marriage, 
from  the  impersonal  love  of  music  itself?  Needless  to  say  they 
have  no  time ;  for  every  hour  devoted  to  emotional  refreshment 
strengthens  the  nerves  for  two  hours  of  extra  labour. 

As  regards  the  love  of  Nature,  woman  is,  indeed,  artificially 
hampered.  She  may  botanise  to  some  extent,  but  she  cannot,  as 
a  rule,  indulge  in  those  solitary  walks  in  a  virgin  forest  which 
alone  can  establish  a  deep  communion  with  Nature.  If  accom- 
panied by  friend,  brother,  husband,  or  lover,  her  thought  will 
inevitably  retain  a  human  tinge.  No  doubt  there  is  something 
comic  in  the  ardent  affection  with  which  a  German  professor  hugs 
his  pet  theory  regarding  the  Greek  dative,  or  the  origin  of  honey 
in  flowers,  and  in  the  ferocity  with  which  he  will  defend  it  against 
his  best  friends,  if  they  happen  to  oppose  it.  But  such  complete 
devotion  to  abstract  crotchets  is  absolutely  necessary  to  the  dis- 
covery of  original  ideas  :  and  as  women  are  rarely  able  or  willing 
to  emerge  from  the  haunts  of  personal  emotion,  this  explains  why 
they  have  achieved  greatness  in  hardly  anything  but  novel-writing, 
which  is  chiefly  concerned  with  personal  emotions. 


PERSONAL  AFFECTIONS 

I. — LOVE   FOE  ANIMALS 

Over  inanimate  objects  and  plants  we  have  this  great  emotional 
advantage  that  we  can  love  them,  whereas  they  cannot  love  us, 
nor  even  one  another,  though  related  by  marriage,  like  flowers. 

Animals,  however,  can  love  both  us  and  one  another  and  be 
loved ;  and  this  establishes  a  distinction  between  them  and  lower 
beings,  and  a  relationship  with  us,  that  warrants  us  in  placing  their 
attachments  under  the  head  of  Personal  Affections. 

Calderwood  is  sufficiently  liberal  to  admit  that,  to  a  degree 
animals  may  be  included  in  our  affections.  But  Adolf  Horwicz 
who  has  written  the  most  complete,  and,  on  the  whole,  most  satis- 
factory analysis  of  the  human  feelings  in  existence,  denies  this. 
"  Love  is  and  remains  a  personal  feeling,"  he  asserts  ;  it  "  can 
only  be  referred  to  persons,  not  to  things.  The  tenderness  of 
American  ladies  towards  dogs  and  cats  is  simply  a  gross  emotional 
caricature." 

So  it  is,  very  often,  especially  in  the  case  of  ladies  who  neglect 
their  children  and  make  fashionable  pets  of  animals,  changing  and 
exchanging  them  with  the  fashion.  But  it  is  simply  absurd  to 


PERSONAL  AFFECTION  17 

mention  this  case  as  a  fair  instance  of  human  love  towards  animak 
How  many  of  the  greatest  geniuses  the  world  has  produced  have 
become  famous  for  their  affectionate  devotion  to  their  dogs  !  "  A 
dog ! "  says  an  old  English  writer,  "  is  the  only  thing  on  this 
earth  that  loves  you  more  than  he  loves  himself."  And  should  we 
be  morally  inferior  to  the  dog — unable  to  love  him  in  return  1 
especially  when  we  remember  that  "  histories,"  as  Pope  remarks, 
"  are  more  full  of  examples  of  the  fidelity  of  dogs  than  of  friends." 

Visclier,  the  well-known  German  writer  on  aesthetics,  goes  so 
far  as  to  admit  that  whenever  he  is  in  society  his  only  wish  is, 
"  Oh,  if  there  was  only  a  dog  here  ! " 

There  is  something  much  nobler  and  deeper  than  sarcasm  on 
humanity  in  Byron's  famous  epitaph  on  his  dog : — 

"Near  this  spot 

Are  deposited  the  remains  of  one 
Who  possessed  Beauty  without  Vanity, 
Strength  without  Insolence, 
Courage  without  Ferocity, 
And  all  the  Virtues  of  man  without  his  Vices." 

I  wonder  if  Horwicz  could  read  the  following  exquisite  prose 
poem  of  Turgenieff  without  feeling  ashamed  of  himself: — 

"  We  two  are  sitting  in  the  room :  my  dog  and  I.  A  violent 
storm  is  raging  without. 

"  The  dog  sits  close  before  me — he  gazes  straight  into  my  eyes. 

"  And  I  too  gaze  straight  into  his  eyes. 

"It  seems  as  if  he  wished  to  say  something  to  me.  He  is 
dumb,  has  no  words,  does  not  understand  himself;  but  I  under- 
stand him. 

"  I  understand  that  he  and  I  are  at  this  moment  governed  by 
the  same  feeling,  that  there  is  not  the  slightest  difference  between 
us.  We  are  beings  of  the  same  kind.  In  each  of  us  shines  and 
glows  the  same  flame. 

"  Death  approaches,  flapping  his  broad,  cold,  moist  wings.  .  .  . 

"  And  all  is  ended. 

"Who  then  will  establish  the  difference  between  the  flames 
which  glowed  within  us  two  ? 

"No!  We  who  exchange  those  glances  are  not  animal  and 
man. 

"  Created  alike  are  the  two  pairs  of  eyes  that  are  fixed  on  each 
other. 

"  And  each  of  these  eye-pairs,  that  of  the  man  as  well  as  that 
.of  the  animal,  expresses  clearly  and  distinctly  an  anxious  craving 
for  mutual  caresse*" 


18  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

It  is  a  vicicras  trait  of  the  human  character  that  it  soon  grows 
callous  to  caresses,  and  that  the  unmasked  expression  of  tender 
emotion  is  regarded  as  undignified  and  in  "  bad  form."  It  is  the 
absence  in  the  dog's  mind  of  this  ugly  human  trait  that  makes  him 
such  a  delightful  friend  and  companion.  However  much  you 
caress  and  fondle  him,  he  will  always  be  anxious  and  grateful  for 
the  next  gentle  pat  on  the  head,  the  next  kind  look,  and  will 
never  despwse  you  for  any  excess  of  fond  emotion  lavished  on  him. 

The  greatest  few  in  Christian  ethics  is,  that  it  takes  so  little 
account  of  this  capacity  of  animals  for  affection,  and  our  duties 
towards  them.  The  duty  of  kindness  towards  animals  is  indeed, 
as  Mr.  Lecky  remarks,  "  the  one  form  of  humanity  which  appears 
more  prominently  in  the  Old  Testament  than  in  the  New."  "Thou 
shalt  not  muzzle  the  mouth  of  the  ox  that  treadeth  out  the  corn," 
is  a  precept  which  deprecates  even  a  very  modified  form  of  cruelty 
to  animals.  Had  this  precept  been  given  in  a  more  generalised 
and  comprehensive  form,  what  an  incalculable  amount  of  suffering 
might  have  been  saved  the  animals  that  had  the  misfortune  to 
be  bora  in  Christian  countries,  as  compared  with  those  in  tht 
Oriental  countries. 

According  to  Mr.  Lecky,  Plutarch  was  the  first  writer  who 
placed  tfee  duty  of  kindness  to  animals  on  purely  moral  grounds ; 
"  and  he  urges  that  duty  with  an  emphasis  and  detail  to  which  no 
adequate  parallel  can,  I  believe,  be  found  in  the  Christian  writings 
for  at  least  1700  years."  Some  of  the  earlier  Greek  philosophers 
had  based  this  duty  on  the  doctrine  of  the  transmigration  of  human 
souls  into  animal  bodies ;  and  it  is  related  that  Pythagoras  used 
to  buy  of  fishermen  the  whole  contents  of  their  nets,  for  the 
pleasure  of  letting  the  fish  go  again.  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  from  less 
superstitious  motives,  used  to  buy  caged  birds  for  the  same  pur- 
pose ;  and  similar  traits  are  told  of  other  men  of  genius  who  were 
sufficiently  refined  to  recognise  the  evidences  of  emotion  in  animals. 
In  our  times,  finally,  we  have  a  man,  Mr.  Bergh,  who  devotes  his 
whole  life  to  the  object  of  establishing  the  personal  rights  of 
animals  to  kind  treatment  on  legal  grounds. 

But,  after  all,  the  most  influential  friend  animals  have  ever 
possessed  was  Darwin,  who,  by  establishing  their  relationship  to 
man  on  grounds  which  no  one  who  understands  the  evidence  can 
question,  for  ever  vindicated  for  them  the  privilege  of  personal 
affection.  The  very  grammar  of  our  language  has  been  affected 
by  Darwinism.  Formerly,  it  was  customary  to  write  "  the  dog 
which  jumped  into  the  water  to  save  a  child."  Now  we  say,  "  the 
dog  who  jumped  into  the  water."  In  other  words,  animals  are 


PERSONAL  AFFECTION  19 

no  longer  regarded  as  "things,"  or  animated  machines,  but  aa 
persons. 

II. — MATERNAL  LOVE 

Within  the  range  of  impersonal  emotions  and  affections,  as  we 
have  seen,  women  are  vastly  inferior  to  men ;  but  in  personal 
affections — partly  owing  to  their  almost  exclusive  devotion  to 
them  —  women  are  commonly  superior  to  men.  Not  always, 
however ;  for,  as  we  shall  see  later  on,  the  prevalent  dogma  that 
woman's  Romantic  Love  is  deeper  and  more  ardent  than  man's  is 
an  absurd  myth.  But  in  conjugal  affection — which  differs  widely 
from  Romantic  Love — woman  is  generally  more  sincere,  devoted, 
and  self-sacrificing  than  man.  In  friendship,  too,  women  are 
more  sincere  and  ardent  than  men ;  for  friendship  is  an  ancient, 
rather  than  a  modern  sentiment;  and  as  women  are  more  con- 
servative than  men,  they  have  preserved  this  sentiment  (at  least 
in  early  life),  while  among  men  it  has  become  nearly  extinct : — 

"All  friendship  is  feigning,  all  loving  mere  folly." — SHAKSPERE. 

But  the  one  affection  in  which  woman  stands  infinitely  above 
man  is  the  maternal,  compared  with  which  paternal  love  is  ordin- 
arily a  mere  shadow.  Romantic  Love  in  man  and  child-love  in 
woman  are  the  two  strongest  passions  which  the  human  mind 
entertains. 

In  depth  and  strength  these  two  passions  are  perhaps  alike. 
In  point  of  antiquity,  the  maternal  feeling  has  an  advantage  over 
the  Love-passion ;  for,  of  all  personal  affections,  the  maternal  was 
developed  first,  and  the  sentiment  of  Romantic  Love  last. 

Personal  affections  are  of  two  kinds  :  (1)  Those  based  on  blood- 
relationship — maternal,  paternal,  filial,  brotherly,  and  sisterly 
love ;  (2)  Those  not  based  on  blood-relationship — friendship  and 
Romantic  Love.  Conjugal  affection  belongs  psychologically  to  the 
first  class. 

That  of  all  relationships  the  one  between  mother  and  child  is 
the  most  intimate  is  obvious.  The  child  is  part  and  parcel  of  the 
mother :  her  own  flesh  and  blood  and  soul ;  and  in  loving  it  the 
mother  practically  loves  a  detached  portion  of  herself — thus  uniting 
the  force  of  selfish  with  that  of  altruistic  emotion.  This  is  the 
primitive  fountain  of  maternal  affection.  A  second  source  of  it 
lies  in  the  resemblance  of  the  child  to  the  father,  reviving  in  the 
mother's  memory  the  romantic  days  of  pre-matrimonial  Love.  It 
must  be  an  unending  source  of  interest  in  a  mother's  mind  to  note 
which  of  the  child's  traits  are  derived  from  her,  which  from  the 


20  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

father.  If  she  loves  herself,  and  loves  her  husband,  the  child  that 
unites  the  traits  of  both  must  be  doubly  dear  to  her.  The  fact 
that  the  child  is  inseparably  associated  with  all  the  mother's  joys 
and  sorrows,  from  the  wedding-day  to  death,  constitutes  a  third 
source  of  her  attachment ;  and  a  fourth  is  the  social  regard  and 
honour  which  an  energetic  and  gifted  son,  or  a  beautiful  and  accom- 
plished daughter,  may  reflect  on  her. 

The  mother  herself  is  of  course  unconscious  of  the  complex 
nature  of  her  feeling  and  its  origin ;  especially  in  the  first  days, 
when  the  new  feeling  dawns  upon  her  like  a  revelation.  As  in 
the  case  of  budding  Love,  the  feeling  is  at  first  less  individual  than 
generic — less  the  affection  of  this  particular  mother  for  this  par- 
ticular child  than  the  bursting  out  of  the  general  feeling  of  mother- 
hood, inherited  by  her  in  common  with  all  women. 

Natural  selection  helps  us  to  explain  how  this  general  feeling 
of  motherhood  was  developed.  As  among  animals,  so  among  our 
savage  and  semi-civilised  ancestors,  those  mothers  who  fondly  cared 
for  their  infants  naturally  succeeded  in  rearing  a  larger  and  more 
vigorous  progeny  than  those  mothers  who  neglected  their  children. 
And  through  hereditary  transmission  this  instinct  gradually  acquired, 
that  marvellous  intensity  and  power  which  we  now  admire. 

The  sublime  and  almost  terrible  height  to  which  this  emotion 
can  rise  is  most  realistically  depicted  in  Rubens's  famous  picture  in 
Munich,  representing  the  murder  of  the  children  at  Bethlehem ; 
in  which  mothers  grasp  the  naked  daggers,  and  frantically  expose 
their  breasts  to  receive  the  blows  intended  for  their  little  ones. 
Throughout  the  animal  kingdom,  including  mankind,  the  female  is 
less  pugnacious  than  the  male,  less  provided  with  means  of  defence, 
and  hence  more  gentle  and  timid ;  yet  in  the  moment  of  peril  the 
mother's  affection  absolutely  annihilates  fear,  and  makes  her  face 
danger  and  death  with  a  courage,  supernatural  strength,  and  en- 
durance, rarely  equalled  by  man,  with  all  his  weapons  and  natural 
consciousness  of  superior  muscle. 

It  is  in  this  blind,  impetuous,  passionate  willingness  of  self- 
sacrifice  that  maternal  affection  most  closely  resembles  the  passion 
of  Romantic  Love. 

HI. — PATERNAL  LOVE 

For  paternal  affection  Natural  Selection  has  done  much  less 
than  for  maternal ;  and  it  is  easy  to  understand  why.  For,  useful 
as  the  father's  assistance  is  in  securing  various  advantages  to  the 
growing  child,  yet  even  if  he  should  cruelly  abandon  it  altogether, 
the  maternal  love  would  still  remain  interposed  to  save  and  rear  it. 


PERSONAL  AFFECTION  21 

Nor  is  it  in  the  human  race  alone  that  paternal  is  weaker  than 
maternal  love.  Among  mammals,  as  Horwicz  remarks,  we  even 
come  across  a  Herr  Papa  occasionally  who  shows  a  great  inclination  to 
dine  on  his  progeny.  And  how  irregularly  the  paternal — sometimes 
even  the  maternal — instinct  is  displayed  among  savages  is  graphi- 
cally shown  by  this  group  of  cases  collected  by  Herbert  Spencer  : — 

"  As  among  brutes  the  philoprogenitive  instinct  is  occasionally 
suppressed  by  the  desire  to  kill,  and  even  devour,  their  young 
ones ;  so  among  primitive  men  this  instinct  is  now  and  again  over- 
ridden by  impulses  temporarily  excited.  Thus,  though  attached 
to  their  offspring,  Australian  mothers,  when  in  danger,  will  some- 
times desert  them;  and  if  we 'may  believe  Angas,  men  have  been 
known  to  bait  their  hooks  with  the  flesh  of  boys  they  have  killed. 
Thus,  notwithstanding  their  marked  parental  affection,  Fuegians 
sell  their  children  for  slaves ;  thus,  among  the  Chonos  Indians,  a 
father,  though  doting  on  his  boy,  will  kill  him  in  a  fit  of  auger 
for  an  accidental  offence.  Everywhere  among  the  lower  race?  \ve 
meet  with  like  incongruities.  Falkner,  while  describing  the 
paternal  feelings  of  Patagonians  as  very  strong,  says  they  often 
pawn  and  sell  their  wives  and  little  ones  to  the  Spaniards  for 
brandy.  Speaking  of  the  children  of  the  Sound  Indians,  Bancroft 
says  they  'sell  or  gamble  them  away.'  According  to  Simpson,  the 
Pi-Edes  *  barter  their  children  to  the  Utes  proper  for  a  few  trinkets 
or  bits  of  clothing.'  And  of  the  Maeusi,  Schomburgk  writes,  'the 
price  of  a  child  is  the  same  as  an  Indian  asks  for  his  dog.'  This 
seemingly  heartless  conduct  to  children  often  arises  from  the  diffi- 
culty experienced  in  rearing  them." 

Some  light  is  thrown  on  the  genesis  and  composition  of  parental 
affection  by  the  three  reasons  named  by  Spencer,  why  among 
savages  and  semi-civilised  peoples  in  general  sons  were  much  more 
appreciated  than  daughters.  While  daughters  were  little  more 
than  an  encumbrance  to  the  parents,  useless  before  puberty,  and 
lost  to  them  after  marriage,  the  sons  could  make  themselves  useful 
in  warding  off  the  enemy,  in  avenging  personal  injuries,  and  in  per- 
forming the  funeral  rites  for  the  benefit  of  departed  ancestors. 

In  a  higher  stage  of  civilisation  it  is  probable  that  utilitarian 
considerations  of  a  somewhat  different  kind  still  formed  a  principal 
ingredient  in  parental  love.  A  son  was  valued  as  an  assistant  in 
workshop  or  field,  a  daughter  as  a  domestic  drudge.  Feelings  of 
a  tenderer  nature  were  of  course  sometimes  present,  but  that  they 
were  not  general  is  shown  by  the  fact,  attested  by  numerous  his- 
toric examples,  that  the  aim  of  our  paternal  ancestors  in  centuries 
past  was  to  make  their  children  fear  rather  than  love  them. 


22  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

A  slight  element  of  fear  is  indeed  necessary  for  the  maintenance 
of  filial  respect  and  discipline ;  but  our  forefathers  were  too  prone 
to  sacrifice  their  tender  feelings  of  sympathy  with  their  offspring 
to  the  gratification  of  parental  authority,  for  the  obvious  reason 
that  the  latter  feeling  was  stronger  than  the  former.  The  fre- 
quency with  which  daughters  especially  were  forced  to  sacrifice 
their  personal  preferences  in  marriage  to  the  ambitions  and  whims 
of  their  father,  affords  the  most  striking  instance  of  the  former 
embryonic  state  of  parental  affection. 

In  modern  parental  love  Pride  is  perhaps  the  most  conspicuous 
trait.  This  Pride  has  two  aspects — one  comic,  one  serious. 
Nothing  is  more  amusing  than  the  suddenness  with  which  the 
"  pride  of  authorship  "  converts  a  bachelor's  well-known  horror  of 
babies  into  the  young  father's  fantastic  worship.  Yet  though  he 
feels  "like  a  little  tin  god  on  wheels/'  he  recognises  the  superior 
rank  of  the  young  prince,  spoils  his  best  trousers  in  kneeling 
before  him,  allows  him  to  pull  his  moustache  and  whiskers,  and, 
indeed,  shows  a  disposition  towards  self-sacrifice  almost  worthy  of 
a  lover. 

The  serious  side  of  the  matter  reveals  one  of  the  greatest  dif- 
ferences between  paternal  and  maternal  love.  A  mother's  love  is 
largely  influenced  by  pity;  hence  she  is  very  apt  to  lavish  her 
fondest  caresses  on  that  child  which  happens  to  be  imperfect  in 
some  way — say  a  cripple — and  therefore  unhappy.  The  father  on 
the  other  hand,  will  show  most  favour  to  his  handsomest  daughter, 
his  most  talented  son ;  and  nothing  will  so  swell  a  father's  heart 
and  cause  it  to  overflow  with  affection  as  the  news  of  some  great 
distinction  acquired  by  this  son. 

IV. — FILIAL  LOVE 

Mr.  Spencer  is  doubtless  right  in  asserting  that  of  all  family 
affections  filial  love  is  the  least  developed ;  and  in  tracing  this 
weakness  especially  to  the  parental  harshness  and  disposition  to 
inspire  excessive  fear  just  referred  to.  In  Germany  the  example 
of  the  Prussian  king  who  so  unmercifully  treated  his  children  was 
extensively  imitated.  The  condition  in  France  is  indicated  by  the 
words  of  Chateaubriand :  "  My  mother,  my  sister,  and  myself, 
transformed  into  statues  by  my  father's  presence,  only  recover 
ourselves  after  he  leaves  the  room ;"  and  in  England,  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  says  Wright,  "  Young  ladies,  even  of  great 
families,  were  brought  up  not  only  strictly,  but  even  tyrannically." 
Arid  ever  two  centuries  Inter  "  children  stood  or  k?ieH  in  trending 


PERSONAL  AFFECTION  23 

silence  in  the  presence  of  their  fathers  and  mothers,  and  might  not 
sit  without  permission." 

Among  animals  filial  affection  can  scarcely  be  said  to  exist, 
except  as  a  very  utilitarian  craving  for  protection  and  sustenance. 
Among  primitive  men  it  is  a  common  practice  to  abandon  aged 
parents  to  their  fate.  The  parents  do  not  resent  this  treatment ; 
and  of  the  Nascopies  Heriot  even  says  that  the  aged  father 
"  usually  employed  as  his  executioner  the  son  who  is  most  dear 
to  him."  Nor  are  cases  of  heartless  neglect  at  all  uncommon 
even  among  modern  civilised  communities.  But  the  gradual 
change  of  fathers  "  from  masters  into  friends "  has  tended  to 
multiply  and  intensify  filial  love  at  the  same  rate  as  paternal; 
and  the  advance  of  moral  refinement  will  tend  to  make  the  lot  of 
aged  parents  more  and  more  pleasant,  not  only  because  the  duty 
of  gratitude  for  favours  received  will  be  more  vividly  realised  and 
enforced  by  example,  but  because  the  cultivation  of  the  imagina- 
tion intensifies  sympathy,  thus  making  it  impossible  for  a  son  or 
daughter  to  be  happy  while  they  know  their  parents  to  be  un- 
happy. 

Our  feelings  are  curiously  complicated  and  subtly  interwoven. 
Parents  feel  a  natural  pride  in  their  children.  The  best  way 
therefore  to  repay  them  for  all  their  troubles  is  to  act  in  such  a 
way  as  to  justify  and  intensify  that  pride.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  thought  that  the  parental  pride  is  gratified  also  gratifies  filial 
vanity,  and  proves  an  additional  incentive  to  ambitious  effort. 

V. — BROTHERLY   AND   SISTERLY   LOVE 

Young  people  of  both  sexes  more  frequently  make  confidants 
and  "  bosom  friends  "  of  their  playmates  and  classmates  than  of 
their  brothers  and  sisters.  Why  is  this  so  ?  Novelty  perhaps 
has  something  to  do  with  it.  The  domestic  experiences  and 
emotions  of  two  brothers  or  sisters  are  apt  to  be  so  much  alike  as 
to  become  monotonous;  whereas  a  member  of  another  family  may 
initiate  them  into  a  fresh  and  fascinating  sphere  of  emotion  and  a 
novel  way  of  looking  at  things.  Moreover,  friendship  is  very 
capricious  in  its  choice ;  and  as  the  number  of  brothers  and  sisters 
is  limited,  the  selection  is  apt  to  be  made  in  the  wider  field  outside 
the  domestic  circle.  Again,  it  is  a  peculiarity  of  human  nature  to 
appear  in  great  neglige  at  home,  and  to  regard  the  nearest  relatives 
as  the  best  lightning-rods  for  disagreeable  moods ;  and  this  does 
not  tend  to  deepen  the  love  of  brothers  and  sisters. 

It  may  be  doubted  whether  this  form  of  affection  exists  among 


24  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

animals  or  among  primitive  men;  and  even  among  civilised  peoples 
the  bond  is  but  a  weak  one,  except  in  the  most  refined  families. 
Though  brothers  feel  bound  to  protect  their  sisters,  they  reserve 
most  of  their  gallantry  for  some  one  else's  sister;  and  though  a 
sister  will  feel  proud  if  her  brother  is  one  of  a  victorious  crew,  her 
heart  will  beat  twice  as  fast  if  it  is  her  lover  instead  of  her  brother. 
The  English  language  has  not  even  a  collective  word  for  the  love 
of  brothers  and  sisters;  and  even  the  partial  terms,  "sisterly  love" 
and  "  brotherly  love,"  have  more  of  an  ecclesiastic  than  a  domestic 
flavour.  The  German  language  has  a  collective  word — and  a  big 
one  too, — Geschivisterliebe;  but  it  would  perhaps  be  misleading  to 
infer  from  its  existence  and  size  that  this  species  of  family  love  is 
more  developed  in  Germany  than  in  England.  The  German's 
advantage  appears  to  be  philological  merely,  and  not  sociological. 
He  is  less  of  a  traveller  and  colonist  than  the  Englishman,  who  is 
very  often  separated  from  his  brothers  and  sisters  for  years.  Yet 
this  sometimes  is  rather  a  gain  than  a  loss;  for  it  destroys  that 
excessive  familiarity  which,  as  just  noted,  makes  friendship  rarer 
among  members  of  the  same  hearth  than  between  individuals  of 
different  families. 

To  the  wider  circles  of  blood-relationship — up  to  "  forty-second 
cousins  " — the  Germans  pay  much  more  regard  than  the  English ; 
and  the  French  perhaps  go  a  step  beyond  the  Germans.  For  in 
France  each  family,  with  its  ramifications,  forms  a  sort  of  clique 
into  which  an  outsider  can  rarely  enter.  ^Needless  to  say  that  this 
forms  a  great  impediment  to  Love's  free  choice. 

VI. — FRIENDSHIP 

If  we  now  turn  to  the  two  remaining  species  of  personal  affec- 
tion— Friendship  and  Love — the  emotional  scenery  undergoes  a 
great  change.  In  all  the  cases  so  far  considered,  blood-relationship 
was  a  source  of  affection;  whereas  in  friendship  it  is  commonly  a 
disadvantage,  and  in  Romantic  Love  it  is  positively  abhorred,  ex- 
cept in  the  more  remote  degree?.  Some  savage  tribes,  it  is  true, 
allow,  or  even  prescribe,  marriages  between  brother  and  sister — 
especially  a  younger  sister;  and  cases  occur  of  marriages  between 
father  and  daughter,  mother  and  son.  But  civilised  society — 
guided  by  religious  precepts,  and  possibly  also  by  a  vague  instinc- 
tive recognition  of  the  advantages  of  cross-fertilisation — condemns 
such  unions  as  hideous  crimes;  and  the  mediaeval  theologians,  in 
their  extreme  zeal,  forbade  all  marriages  within  the  seventh  degree 
of  relationship. 


PERSONAL  AFFECTION  25 

In  the  case  of  friendship  the  objection  to  blood-relationship  is 
not  founded  on  a  social  or  religious  precept;  but  it  exists  all  the 
same,  as  already  noted.  Perhaps  Jean  Paul's  maxim  that  friends 
may  have  everything  in  common  except  their  room  accounts 
for  its  existence.  Brothers  and  sisters  are  commonly  too  much 
alike  in  their  thoughts  and  tastes  to  become  friends,  in  the  special 
sense  of  the  word.  Hence  it  is  that  there  is  apt  to  be  a  deeper 
attachment  between  those  brothers  and  sisters  who  have  frequently 
been  separated  by  school-terms  than  among  those  who  are  always 
together.  For  in  friendship,  as  in  love,  a  short  absence  is  advan- 
tageous. 

Friendship  is  partly  an  outgrowth  of  the  social  instinct  and 
partly  a  result  of  special  associations,  habit,  community  of  interests 
and  tastes.  As  a  boy  I  had  an  opportunity  to  make  some  interest- 
ing observations  on  friendship  among  animals,  showing  that  it 
differed  in  degree  only,  and  not  in  kind  or  origin,  from  that  of  man. 
Among  the  animals  we  kept  at  our  country-house  were  a  dog,  a  pet 
sheep,  and  some  pigs.  The  dog  showed  his  confidence  in  the 
sheep's  amiable  forbearance  by  abandoning  his  cold  kennel  on 
winter  nights  and  seeking  warmer  quarters  by  the  side  of  his 
woolly  neighbour.  For  the  pigs  his  friendly  regards  were  showfc 
in  a  less  utilitarian  manner,  by  driving  away,  unbidden  and  un- 
taught, any  swinish  tramps  that  appeared,  uninvited,  to  share  their 
meals.  But  the  most  peculiar  relations  existed  between  the  sheep 
and  the  pigs.  In  the  absence  of  any  other  means  of  satisfying  its 
gregarious  or  social  instincts,  the  sheep  joined  the  pigs  every 
morning  in  their  foraging  expeditions  in  the  woods,  returning  with 
them  in  the  evening.  And,  what  was  still  more  remarkable,  when 
after  a  time  a  dozen  sheep  were  added  to  our  stock  of  animals,  the 
old  pet  remained  faithful  to  the  pigs,  and  paid  no  attention  what- 
ever to  the  newcomers.  Here  the  friendly  attachment,  based  on 
habitual  association  and  the  memory  of  mutual  pleasures  of  grazing, 
was  strong  enough  to  overcome  the  inherited  fellow-feeling  for 
members  of  its  own  species. 

Between  this  instance  and  those  ordinary  cases  of  companion- 
ship among  men  which  are  called  friendship,  there  is  hardly  any 
difference.  In  the  more  intimate  cases  of  special  friendship  the 
craving  for  companionship  is  strengthened  by  a  community  of 
thoughts  and  emotions.  Bacon  gives  us  in  a  nut-shell  three  of  the 
ingredients  of  friendship  which  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  primitive 
form  just  considered.  The  first  is  this,  that  each  friend  becomes 
a  sort  of  secular  confessor,  to  whom  the  other  may  confide  all  his 
hopes  and  fears,  joys  and  sorrows  \  the  second  is  this,  that  "  a 


26  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

friend's  wits  and  understanding  do  clarify  and  break  up  in  th<? 
communicating  and  discoursing  with  another;"  so  that  "he 
waxeth  wiser  than  himself  •  and  that  more  by  an  hour's  discourse 
than  by  a  day's  meditation  ;  "  the  third  is  the  "  aid  and  bearing  a 
part  in  all  actions  and  occasions  "  to  be  expected  of  a  friend. 

Friendship  is  not  a  modern  sentiment.  Cases  of  it  such  as 
existed  among  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Romans,  characterised  by 
an  ardour  that  made  Friendship  resemble  the  Love  passion,  are  no 
longer  to  be  met  with,  although  a  somewhat  less  intense  form 
frequently  occurs  among  young  men  at  college  or  young  ladies  in 
high  schools  :  thus  illustrating  the  law  that  the  individual  passes 
through  the  same  stages  of  development  as  the  race. 

"  The  enthusiasm  of  friendship,"  says  Voltaire  in  his  Philosophic 
Dictionary,  "  was  greater  among  the  Greeks  and  Arabians  than  it 
is  among  ourselves.  The  tales  which  these  peoples  have  imagined 
on  friendship  are  delightful;  we  have  nothing  to  match  them. 
We  are  somewhat  dry  in  everything.  I  do  not  see  a  single  grand 
trait  of  friendship  in  our  novels,  in  our  histories,  on  our  stage." 

Why  is  this  so  ?  Let  another  Frenchman,  La  Rochefoucauld, 
answer :  "  The  reason  why  the  majority  of  women  are  but  little 
touched  by  friendship,  is  because  it  seems  insipid  after  one  has' 
experienced  love." 

Precisely.  The  reason  why  the  ancients,  in  their  histories  and 
dramas,  made  so  much  of  friendship,  while  modern  poets  almost 
ignore  it,  is  that  the  latter  have  a  subject  a  thousand  times  more 
fascinating  than  friendship,  a  subject  unknown  to  the  ancients — 
the  inexhaustible  subject  of  Romantic  Love. 

VII. — ROMANTIC   LOVE 

That  Love  is  superior  to  friendship  is  apparent  from  the  one 
consideration  that  it  includes  all  the  features  of  friendship,  and 
adds  to  them  a  thousand  ecstasies  of  which  friendship  never 
dreams.  The  lover,  no  less  than  the  friend,  gratifies  his  social 
instinct,  his  desire  for  companionship,  his  need  of  confessing  his 
own  and  sharing  another's  hopes  and  fears,  his  craving  for  stimu- 
lating conversation,  his  sympathetic  disposition  to  give  and  receive 
aid  in  the  trials  of  life.  But  if  modern  friendship  ever  had  any 
moments  to  compare  with  the  romantic  episodes,  the  tragic  agonies 
and  wild  delights  of  love,  would  it  be  conceivable  that  our  realistic 
novelists  and  poets  could  neglect  it  altogether  and  devote  all  theii 
attention  to  Love  ? 

The  other  personal  affections  fare  no  better  in  comparison  with 


PERSONAL  AFFECT  I  OX  27 

Love.  How  prosaic  even  Conjugal  Love  seems  to  us  as  compared 
with  Romantic  Love,  of  which  it  is  the  metamorphosis  and 
continuation,  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  novelists  always  end  their 
stories  with  the  marriage  of  the  hero  and  heroine. 

Maternal  Love,  however,  has  four  traits  which  occasionally 
make  it  resemble  Romantic  Love  in  intensity.  They  are:  (1)  a 
disposition  toward  self-sacrifice  ;  (2)  jealousy ;  (3)  an  exaggerated 
adoration ;  and  (4)  pride  of  ownership.  But  of  these  the  first  is 
the  only  one  that  ever  quite  rises  to  the  giddy  heights  of  rapturous 
Love.  Jealousy  is  often  aroused  in  mothers  if  their  children 
display  excessive  fondness  or  partiality  for  their  father  or  a  family 
friend ;  and  they  know  well  in  such  a  case  how  to  make  the  latter 
understand  that  his  presence  is  an  impertinence.  But  this 
momentary  ebullition  of  feeling  is  but  a  storm  in  a  tea-kettle 
compared  to  the  ferocity  of  a  jealous  lover  seeking  to  devour  his 
rival.  Nor  does  a  mother's  excessive  worship  of  the  self-evident 
beauty  and  accomplishments  of  her  offspring  ever  quite  equal  the 
hyperbolic  illusion  and  folly  of  a  lover. 

Again,  Romantic  Love  is  a  monopolist  who  never  shares  his 
treasures  of  affection  with  another,  whereas  a  mother,  if  she  has 
more  than  one  child,  is  obliged  to  divide  her  heart  like  an  apple, 
so  that  each  may  get  a  slice.  Would  you  infer  from  this  that  the 
mother  has  a  deeper  fund  of  affection  than  the  lover,  because  she 
can  love  several  at  a  time  ?  Impossible.  The  amount  of  emotion 
human  nerves  can  bear  is  limited.  The  more  you  widen  it,  the 
shallower  does  it  become.  The  general  love  for  all  mankind  is 
the  weakest  and  shallowest  of  all,  the  lover  s  concentrated  affection 
for  one  person  the  deepest  and  strongest.  See  what  a  terrible 
strain  on  his  nerves  this  deep  passion  is :  how  he  loses  flesh, 
grows  pale  and  feverish,  and  prone  to  self-destruction.  Could  a 
mother  survive  if  she  loved  each  one  of  five  or  ten  children  with 
the  depth  and  intensity  of  a  lover  ?  No,  we  must  take  back  what 
we  said  a  few  pages  back.  Maternal  affection  is  after  all  a  mere 
phantom  compared  with  Romantic  Love. 

And  the  ace  of  hearts  is  yet  to  be  played — in  favour  of 
Romantic  Love.  The  mother's  affection  is  bestowed  on  what 
after  all  is  merely  a  severed  portion  of  her  own  individuality ; 
whereas  the  two  lovers  are  individuals  utterly  unrelated.  And 
herein  lies  the  Miracle  of  Love  :  that  it  can  in  a  few  days,  ay,  a 
few  minutes,  ignite  between  two  young  persons  who  have  perhaps 
never  before  seen  each  other,  a  passion  more  intense  than  that 
which  in  the  mother  is  the  growth  of  months  and  years. 

It  follows  as  a  corollary  from  this  that  Romantic  Love  is  not 


28  KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

only  more  intense,  more  concentrated,  more  immediate  and  irre- 
sistible than  parental  affection,  but  also  more  just,  more  in 
accordance  with  the  highest  precepts  of  morality,  because  more 
altruistic.  For  the  mother  loves  only  her  own  flesh  and  blood, 
while  the  lover  adores  a  stranger ;  like  Romeo,  he  may  even  adore 
the  daughter  of  an  enemy. 

Thousands  of  fathers  and  mothers,  moreover,  love  their  own 
ugly,  vicious,  and  stupid  children  more  than  the  beautiful,  well- 
behaved,  and  clever  children  of  their  neighbours.  Who,  on  the 
other  hand,  ever  heard  of  a  young  man  loving  his  ugly  sister  more 
than  the  beautiful  and  accomplished  daughter  of  his  neighbour  1 

In  consideration  of  the  great  importance  of  the  family  feelings 
as  a  social  cement,  the  parental  injustice  in  question  is  pardoned 
and  even  commended.  But  from  the  standpoint  of  progressive 
culture,  under  guidance  of  the  law  of  Natural  Selection,  it  must  be 
condemned;  for  it  favours  demerit  in  preference  to  merit,  and 
retards  the  advent  of  the  time  when  family  and  national  prejudices 
will  be  forgotten  and  replaced  by  a  loverlike,  cosmopolitan  admira- 
tion of  personal  excellence  wherever  and  in  whomsoever  found. 

This  matter,  though  it  has  a  semi-humorous  aspect,  is  of  the- 
deepest  philosophic  import.  If  family  affection,  so  important  as 
the  first  step  in  the  development  of  society,  were  the  only  form  of 
personal  love,  close  intermarriage  between  blood-relations  would  be 
unduly  encouraged.  Fortunately  the  all-powerful  instinct  of 
Romantic  Love  comes  in  as  a  corrective  of  family  affection,  basing 
its  preferences  not  on  relationship  and  resemblance,  but  on  dif- 
ferences and  complementary  qualities,  thus  securing  for  the  human 
race  the  advantages  of  "  cross-fertilisation."  We  have  already  seen 
that  flowers  owe  their  beauty  to  the  cross-fertilisation  brought 
about  through  the  agency  of  bees  and  butterflies.  In  the  same 
way  the  human  race  owes  its  supreme  beauty  to  the  cross-fertilisa- 
tion— the  union  of  complementary  qualities — brought  about  through 
the  agency  of  Love.  Is  it  perhaps  for  this  reason  that  Love  is  so 
much  like  a  butterfly,  and  that  Cupid  has  wings  ? 

Instead  of  being  merely  a  transient  malady  of  youth,  as  cynics 
aver,  or  only  an  epicurean  episode  in  our  emotional  life,  Love  is 
thus  seen  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  (if  not  the  greatest)  moral, 
sesthetic,  and  hygienic  forces  that  control  human  life.  And  in  face 
of  this  fact  the  few  pages,  or  lines,  commonly  devoted  to  this 
passion  in  psychologic  text-books,  seem  wofully  inadequate.  No 
apology  is  therefore  needed  for  our  attempt  to  subject  Romantic 
Love  to  a  thorough  chemical  analysis,  and  to  discover  its  ingredients. 
We  shall  first  enumerate  and  briefly  characterise  these  ingredients  : 


OVERTONES  OF  ROMANTIC  LOVE  29 

then  proceed  to  examine  how  many  of  them  are  to  be  found  in  the 
love  of  animals  and  savages,  of  the  ancient  nations  and  of  our 
mediaeval  ancestors ;  and  finally,  we  shall  attempt  to  describe  these 
various  component  parts  of  the  passion,  as  fully  developed  in 
Modern  Love. 


OVERTONES  OF  ROMANTIC  LOVE 

First  of  all  it  is  necessary  to  get  rid  of  the  prevalent  illusion 
that  Love  is  a  single  emotion.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  most 
complex  and  ever-varying  group  of  emotions.  Love  is  not  a 
diamond  which  drops  from  a  celestial  body,  cut  and  polished,  and 
ready  to  be  set  into  the  human  soul.  Rather  is  it  the  crown  of 
life,  composed  of  various  jewels,  some  of  which,  mixed  with  much 
coarse  ore,  may  be  found  in  the  animal  kingdom,  among  primitive 
men  and  ancient  civilised  nations;  but  of  which  no  complete 
specimens  are  to  be  found  till  we  come  to  comparatively  modern 
times.  Each  lover  has  his  own  crown,  but  no  two  of  them  are 
exactly  alike.  The  component  jewels  vary  in  size  and  brilliancy. 
Some — as  Coyness,  Adoration,  Gallantry,  Jealousy — are  occasion- 
ally missing  or  lacking  in  lustre ;  and  in  Ancient  Love  those  are 
habitually  absent  which  in  Modern  Love  are  most  prominent  and 
cherished. 

Perhaps  the  composite  nature  of  Love  can  be  still  better  illus- 
trated by  a  comparison  with  colours,  and  with  "overtones"  in 
music,  between  which  and  the  elements  of  Love  there  exists  a 
wonderfully  close  analogy. 

Professor  Helmholtz  has  proved  that  just  as  white  is  not  a 
simple  colour,  but  a  combination  of  all  the  hues  of  the  rainbow,  so 
any  single  tone  produced  by  the  voice  or  a  musical  instrument  is 
not  simple,  as  it  seems,  but  contains,  besides  the  fwiidamentctl  tone 
which  the  ordinary  listener  alone  hears,  several  partial  or  "  over- 
tones," which  blend  so  closely  with  the  fundamental  tone,  that  it 
takes  a  very  delicate  ear  and  close  attention  to  distinguish  them. 
Were  it  not  for  these  overtones,  all  instruments  would  sound  alike, 
and  music  would  lose  all  its  charms  of  "colour."  For  the  funda- 
mental tones  of  instruments  and  voices  are  identical,  and  the  only 
thing  that  enables  a  musician  to  tell  at  a  distance  whether  a  given 
note  proceeds  from  a  piano,  voice,  or  violin,  is  the  presence  of  these 
overtones,  which  vary  in  their  number,  relative  loudness  and  pitch 
(or  height),  thus  giving  rise  to  the  differences  of  quality  or  timbre 
in  instruments. 


30  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

In  Love  the  fundamental  tone  is  the  sexual  relation — the  fact 
that  one  of  the  lovers  is  male,  the  other  female.  This  fundamental 
tone  does  not  vary  throughout  Nature.  It  is  the  same  amnnr 
animals  and  savages  as  among  civilised  men;  and  what  distinguishes 
the  passion  of  one  of  these  groups  from  that  of  the  other  is  alone 
the  overtones  of  love,  which  vary  in  number,  relative  prominence, 
and  refinement  ("  high-toned  "). 

What  are  these  overtones  ? 

I. — INDIVIDUAL  PREFERENCE 

What  first  ennobles  Love  and  raises  it  above  mere  passion,  is 
the  stubborn  preference  for  a  particular  individual.  A  savage 
chief  ignorant  of  Love  would  not  hesitate  a  moment  to  exchange 
his  bride  for  two  or  three  other  women  equally  young  and  tempt- 
ing ;  whereas  a  man  under  the  influence  of  Love  would  not  give 
his  beloved  for  the  choice  among  all  the  beauties  of  the  Caucasus 
and  Andalusia.  "  If  we  pass  in  review  the  different  degrees  of 
Jove,"  says  Schopenhauer,  "  from  the  most  transient  attachment  to 
the  most  violent  passion,  we  shall  find  that  the  difference  between 
them  springs  from  their  different  degrees  of  individualisation." 

II. — MONOPOLY   OK  EXCLUSIVENESS 

Closely  connected  with  the  first  overtone  is  that  of  exclusive- 
ness.  True  Love  is  a  monopolist.  As  in  a  sun-glass  all  the  solar 
rays  are  concentrated  into  one  burning  focus,  so  are  the  lover's 
emotions  on  his  beloved.  Not  only  does  he  care  for  her  alone  of 
all  women,  but  he  voluntarily  offers  her  a  monopoly  of  his  thoughts 
and  feelings.  In  return  for  this,  however,  he  expects  and  exacts 
of  her  a  like  monopoly  of  her  affection  and  favours ;  and  this  leads 
to  the  next  overtone. 

III. — JEALOUSY 

This  is  the  salt  and  pepper  of  Love.  A  little  of  it  is  piquant, 
too  much  of  it  spoils  the  soup.  The  moral  mission  of  Jealousy  is, 
by  means  of  watchfulness  and  the  inspiring  of  fear,  to  ensure 
fidelity  and  chastity,  and  thus  help  tc  develop  the  romantic 
features  of  Love. 

iv. — COYNESS 

This  is  a  specially  feminine  trait  of  Love,  which,  by  retarding 
the  eager  lover's  conquest,  augments  and  idealises  his  passion. 


OVERTONES  OF  ROMANTIC  LOVE  31 

In  Modern   Love,   Coyness   varies   in   two   directions  —  towards 
prudery  on  one  side,  coquetry  on  the  other. 


V. — GALLANTRY 

If  Coyness  is  a  peculiarly  feminine  ingredient  of  Love,  Gallantry, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  a  specially  masculine  attribute.  The  eager 
desire  to  please,  it  is  true,  is  also  present  in  a  woman's  Love ;  but 
it  shows  itself  less  as  an  active  impulse  to  do  something  for  the 
lover,  than  as  a  desire  to  please  him  by  making  herself  as  attractive 
as  possible. 

VJ. — SELF-SACRIFICE 

In  the  most  violent  cases  of  Love  this  overtone  may  reveal 
itself  in  two  ways  :  either  as  a  mere  exaggeration  of  Gallantry — a 
desire  to  please  even  at  the  risk  of  life ;  or  as  a  suicidal  impulse  in 
cases  of  hopeless  passion — when  the  one  object  which  seemed  to 
make  life  worth  living  has  been  placed  beyond  reach. 


VII. — SYMPATHY 

"In  order  to  feel  with  another's  pain  it  is  enough  to  be  a  man; 
to  feel  with  another's  pleasure  it  is  needful  to  be  an  angel."  If 
this  be  true,  then  lovers  are  angels.  For  not  only  do  they  share 
one  another's  pleasures,  but  it  is  impossible  for  the  one  to  be  really 
happy  unless  the  other  enjoys  the  same  emotion.  "Does  that 
other  see  the  same  star,  the  same  melting  cloud ;  read  the  same 
book,  feel  the  same  emotion  that  now  delights  me  1 " — these  are, 
in  Emerson's  words,  the  questions  which  the  lovers,  when  separated, 
ask  incessantly. 

VIII. — PRIDE   OF   CONQUEST   AND   POSSESSION 

In  his  suggestive  but  incomplete  analysis  of  Love,  in  his 
Principles  of  Psychology,  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  names  as  two 
of  the  emotions  which  enter  into  it,  the  Love  of  Approbation  and 
Self-Esteem,  which  he  thus  defines  :  "To  be  preferred  above  all 
the  world,  and  that  by  one  admired  beyond  all  others,  is  to  have 
the  love  of  approbation  gratified  in  a  degree  passing  every  previous 
experience :  especially  as,  to  this  direct  gratification  of  it,  there 
must  be  added  that  reflex  gratification  of  it,  which  results  from 
the  preference  being  witnessed  by  unconcerned  persons.  Further, 
there  is  the  allied  emotion  of  self-esteem.  To  have  succeeded  in 


32  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

gaining  such  attachment  from,  and  sway  over,  another,  is  a  practical 
proof  of  power,  of  superiority,  which  cannot  fail  agreeably  to  excite 
the  amour  propre." 

This  is  well  expressed,  but  the  names  are  obviously  not  well 
chosen.  It  is  hardly  correct  to  intimate  that  the  "  love  of  appro- 
bation "  and  "  self-esteem  "  constitute  two  of  the  group  of  emotions 
which  we  call  Love.  What  the  lover  feels  is  not  a  "  love  of 
approbation,"  etc.,  but  the  emotion  of  Pride  at  having  conquered 
and  gained  possession  of  so  desirable  a  prize. 

IX. — EMOTIONAL   HYPERBOLE 

The  lover  sees,  thinks,  and  feels  only  in  superlatives.  Hi3 
eyes  are  no  longer  mere  "  windows  of  the  soul,"  but  microscopes 
which  magnify  all  the  beloved's  merits  on  the  scale  of  seven  square 
miles  to  the  inch.  And  the  hyberbolic  imagery  which  constitutes 
the  essence  of  love-poetry  is  his  everyday  food — with  a  special 
menu  on  Sundays. 

X. — MIXED  MOODS — MAJOE  AND   MINOR 

It  is  in  Love  that  "confusion  makes  his  masterpiece."  The 
lover  is  so  incessantly  tossed  on  the  ocean  of  turbulent  emotion 
that  he  soon  ceases  to  know  or  care  which  is  up  and  which  down, 
and  all  that  remains  is  an  all-engrossing  sense  of  love-sickness. 

"  Angels  call  it  heavenly  joy, 
Infernal  torture  the  devils  say  ; 
Aud  men  ?    They  call  it— Love." — HEINE. 


XI. — ADMIRATION   OF  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

This  is  the  aesthetic  overtone  of  Love ;  and  so  prominent  is  it 
that  it  is  commonly  heard  before  and  above  all  the  others. 
\"  Beauty  provoketh  thieves  sooner  than  gold,"  says  Shakspere; 
and  if  you  tell  twenty  of  your  male  acquaintances  that  you  have 
been  introduced  to  a  young  lady,  nineteen  of  them  will  ask  im- 
mediately, "Is  she  pretty?"  No  reporter  ever  writes  about 
a  girl  murdered  by  a  tramp  or  burnt  in  a  house,  without  describing 
her  as  a  model  of  beauty,  in  order  to  double  the  reader's  interest 
and  quintuple  his  pity.  Madame  de  Stael  confessed  that  she 
would  have  gladly  exchanged  her  literary  genius  for  beauty. 
With  the  Greeks  already  the  words  Love  and  Beauty  were  in- 
separably associated;  and  even  the  Chinese,  who  are  not  em- 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS  83 

barrassed  by  an  excess  of  beauty,  have  a  proverb,  "With  one 
smile  she  overthrew  a  city,  with  another  a  kingdom." 

This  completes  the  preliminary  analysis  of  Love.  I  regret 
exceedingly  that  I  have  been  able  to  discover  only  eleven  "  over- 
tones "  in  Modern  Love :  but  inasmuch  as  at  least  six  of  these — 
Nos.  V.  to  X. — are  only  about  a  thousand  years  old,  there  is 
reason  to  hope  that  some  fine  morning  in  May  a  new  one  will  be 
born  to  make  up  the  round  dozen.  If  so,  it  is  to  be  hoped  it  will 
assume  in  men  the  form  of  an  absolute  insistance  on  feminine 
health,  and  an  instinctive  detestation  of  the  hideous  and  love- 
killing  fashions  with  which  women  still  persist  in  ruining  their 
beauty. 

HERBERT    SPENCER   ON   LOVE 

For  the  sake  of  comparison  I  may  cite  Mr.  Spencer's  summary 
of  the  elements  which  he  thinks  compose  Love :  "  Bound  the 
physical  feeling  forming  the  nucleus  of  the  whole  there  are 
gathered  the  feelings  produced  by  personal  beauty,  that  constitut- 
ing simple  attachment,  those  of  reverence,  of  love  of  approbation, 
of  self-esteem,  of  property,  of  love  of  freedom,  of  sympathy.  All 
these,  each  excited  in  the  highest  degree,  and  severally  tending  to 
reflect  their  excitement  on  each  other,  form  the  composite  psychical 
state  which  we  call  Love.  And  as  each  of  these  feelings  is 
in  itself  highly  complicated,  uniting  a  wide  range  of  states  of  con- 
sciousness, we  may  say  that  this  passion  fuses  into  an  immense 
aggregation,  nearly  all  the  elementary  excitations  of  which  we  are 
capable  ;  and  that  from  this  results  its  irresistible  power." 

Let  us  now  see  how  many  of  the  characters  of  true  Romantic 
Love  are  to  be  found  in  the  courtship  of  animals  and  savages. 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS 

As  comparative  psychology  is  the  youngest  branch  of  philosophy, 
there  are  still  among  us  thousands  of  excellent  but  ignorant  folks 
who  cling  to  the  old  mythologic  notion  that  animals  are  animated 
machines  or  things  "which"  are  devoid  of  intellect  and  feeling, 
and  guided  by  a  metaphysical  fetish  called  c'  instinct."  To  such 
the  undertaking  of  a  search  for  Love — real  Romantic  Love — 
among  animals,  will  seem  not  only  absurd,  but  a  sort  of  high 
treason  against  human  conceit.  To  mitigate  any  possible  indigna- 
tion on  the  reader's  part,  it  may  be  advisable,  therefore,  to  begin 
by  giving  a  few  illustrations  demonstrating  the  existence  of  various 

D 


84  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

family  affections  and  friendship  in  the  animal  world;  after  which,  the 
possibility  of  finding  traces  of  Love  proper  will  appear  less  remote. 

Paternal,  filial,  brotherly,  and  sisterly  love,  comparatively 
weak  and  undeveloped  in  man,  are  indeed  almost  absent  in  the 
lower  animals.  Birds  of  the  same  brood  do  not  recognise  each 
other  after  they  have  left  their  nest ;  and  a  dog  will  not  hesitate 
to  attack  his  own  brother  as  a  stranger  after  a  year's  separation. 
The  part  which  a  male  bird  takes  in  feeding  and  protecting  the 
young  is,  as  Horwicz  suggests,  an  element  of  his  conjugal  rather 
than  his  paternal  feeling ;  and  a  young  animal  that  would  risk  its 
own  life  in  defence  of  its  mother  or  father  is  yet  to  be  heard  from. 

Friendship,  however,  does  exist  between  animals,  as  we  have 
already  seen;  and  not  only  among  animals  of  the  same  species, 
but  of  different  species.  "  Happy  families  "  of  animals  commonly 
hostile  to  each  other  have  been  known  outside  of  the  showman's 
cage.  Buchner  cites  instances  of  friendship  between  a  robin  and  a 
cat ;  a  fox  and  duck ;  dog  and  deer ;  cat  and  mouse ;  and  even 
such  absurdly  incongruous  cases  of  attachment  as  between  a  crow 
and  a  bull;  a  dog  and  an  elephant;  a  cat  and  a  rattlesnake.  But  the . 
deepest  feeling  of  friendship  which  any  animal  is  capable  of  feeling 
is  undoubtedly  the  dog's  love  of  his  master.  "Professor  Braubach," 
says  Darwin,  "  goes  so  far  as  to  maintain  that  a  dog  looks  on  his 
master  as  on  a  god."  "  It  is  said,"  he  adds  in  a  footnote,  "  that 
Bacon  long  ago,  and  the  poet  Burns,  held  the  same  notion." 

Maternal  and  conjugal  affection,  however,  are,  as  in  man,  so 
in  animals,  the  two  strongest  forms  of  family  attachment.  A 
French  author,  M.  Meuault,  has  written  a  special  treatise  on 
L }  Amour  Maternel  chez  les  Animaux,  and  Dr.  Biichuer  exclaims, 
a  propos  :  "  If  a  human  mother,  with  certain  destruction  staring 
in  her  face,  dashes  into  a  burning  house  to  save  her  imperilled 
child,  and  thus  finds  her  own  death,  this  sacrifice  is  no  greater,  no 
more  heroic,  than  that  of  a  stork-mother  who,  after  vain  efforts  to 
save  her  brood,  is  voluntarily  burnt  up  with  them  in  her  nest ;  or 
of  those  elephant-mothers  who,  as  Schweinfurth  narrates,  in  the; 
African  hunting  expeditions,  when  the  bushes  along  the  shore  are 
ignited  in  order  to  drive  out  the  elephants,  seek  to  save  their 
young  ones  by  filling  their  trunks  with  water  and  sprinkling  it 
over  them,  while  they  themselves  are  roasting." 

How  low  down  in  the  scale  of  animal  life  traces  of  conjugal 
attachment  are  to  be  found  is  shown  by  the  following  case  cited 
by  Darwin  :  "  An  accurate  observer,  Mr.  Lonsdale,  informs  me 
that  he  placed  a  pair  of  landsnails,  one  of  which  was  weakly,  into 
a  small  and  ill-provided  garden.  After  a  short  time  the  strong 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS  85 

and  healthy  individual  disappeared,  and  was  traced  by  its  track  of 
slime  over  a  wall  into  an  adjoining  well- stocked  garden.  Mr. 
Lonsdale  concluded  that  it  had  deserted  its  sickly  mate,  but  after 
an  absence  of  twenty-four  hours  it  returned,  and  apparently  com- 
municated the  result  of  its  successful  exploration,  for  both  then 
started  along  the  same  track  and  disappeared  over  the  wall." 
Again,  the  naturalist,  Mr.  Bate,  experimented  on  the  conjugal 
feelings  of  Gammarus  marinus,  or  the  sandskipper  common  on 
English  shores,  by  separating  a  male  from  its  female,  and  im- 
prisoning both  in  the  same  vessel  with  many  individuals  of  the 
same  species.  "  The  female,  when  thus  divorced,  soon  joined  the 
others.  After  a  time  the  male  was  put  again  into  the  same 
vessel;  and  he  then,  after  swimming  about  for  a  time,  dashed 
into  the  crowd,  and  without  any  fighting  at  once  took  away  his 
wife.  This  fact  shows  that  in  the  Amphipoda,  an  order  low  in 
the  scale,  the  males  and  females  recognise  each  other,  and  are 
mutually  attached." 

Concerning  birds,  Darwin  remarks:  "It  has  often  been  said 
that  parrots  become  so  deeply  attached  to  each  other  that  when 
one  dies  the  other  pines  for  a  long  time ;  but  Mr.  Jeuner  Weir 
thinks  that  with  most  birds  the  strength  of  their  affection  has 
been  much  exaggerated.  Nevertheless,  when  one  of  a  pair  in  a 
state  of  nature  has  been  shot,  the  survivor  has  been  heard  for  days 
afterwards  uttering  a  plaintive  call ;  and  Mr.  St.  John  gives 
various  facts  proving  the  attachment  of  mated  birds.  Mr.  Bennett 
relates  that  in  China  after  a  drake  of  the  beautiful  mandarin  Teal 
had  been  stolen,  the  duck  remained  disconsolate,  though  sedulously 
courted  by  another  mandarin  drake,  who  displayed  before  her  all 
his  charms.  After  an  interval  of  three  weeks  the  stolen  drake 
was  recovered,  and  instantly  the  pair  recognised  each  other  with 
extreme  joy."  "  Dr.  Buller  says  (-Birds  of  New  Zealand)  that  a 
male  king  lory  was  killed,  and  the  female  *  fretted  and  moped,  re- 
fused her  food,  and  died  of  a  broken  heart.' " 

But  there  are  exceptions  to  this  rule  of  conjugal  attachment 
and  fidelity,  as  is  shown  in  the  following  quotation,  which  com- 
pletes the  curious  analogy  between  human  and  bird  love  connubial : 
"Mr.  Harrison  "Weir  has  himself  observed,  and  has  heard  from 
several  breeders,  that  a  female  pigeon  will  occasionally  take  a 
strong  fancy  for  a  particular  male,  and  will  desert  her  own  mate 
for  him.  Some  females,  according  to  another  experienced  observer, 
Riedel,  are  of  a  profligate  disposition,  and  prefer  almost  any  stranger 
to  their  own  mate.  Some  amorous  males,  called  by  our  English 
fanciers  '  gay  birds,'  are  so  successful  in  their  gallantries  that,  as 


38  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Mr.  H.  Weir  informs  me,  they  must  be  shut  up  on  account  of  the 
mischief  which  they  cause." 

So  there  are  Don  Juans  even  among  pigeons ! 

Intermarriages  or  mixed  unions  also  occur  among  birds.  Says 
Darwin :  "It  is  certain  that  distinct  species  of  birds  occasionally 
pair  in  a  state  of  nature  and  produce  hybrids.  Many  instances 
could  be  given :  thus  Macgillivray  relates  how  a  male  blackbird 
and  female  thrush  'fell  in  love  with  each  other,'  and  produced 
offspring.  Several  years  ago  eighteen  cases  had  been  recorded  of 
the  occurrence  in  Great  Britain  of  hybrids  between  the  black 
grouse  and  pheasant.  ...  A  male  widgeon,  living  with  females 
of  the  same  species,  has  been  known  to  pair  with  a  pintail  duck. 
Lloyd  describes  the  remarkable  attachment  between  a  shield-drake 
and  a  common  duck.  Many  additional  instances  could  be  given ; 
and  the  Rev.  E.  S.  Dixon  remarks  that  *  those  who  have  kept 
many  different  species  of  geese  together,  well  know  what  unaccount- 
able attachments  they  are  frequently  forming,  and  that  they  are 
quite  as  likely  to  pair  and  rear  young  with  individuals  of  a  race 
(species)  apparently  the  most  alien  to  themselves,  as  with  their 
own  stock.' " 

In  their  marriages  animals  have  anticipated  man  in  every 
possible  arrangement  —  promiscuity,  polygamy,  monogamy,  poly- 
andry. According  to  Darwin,  "Many  mammals  and  some  few 
birds  are  polygamous,  but  with  other  animals  belonging  to  the 
lower  classes  I  have  found  no  evidence  of  this  habit."  He  has 
not  "  heard  of  any  species  in  the  Orders  of  Cheiroptera,  Edentata, 
Insectivora,  and  Rodents  being  polygamous,  excepting  that  among 
the  Rodents  the  common  rat,  according  to  some  rat-catchers,  lives 
with  several  females."  Among  the  terrestrial  carnivora  the  lion 
seems  to  be  the  only  polygamist,  while  the  marine  carnivora  are 
"  eminently  polygamous." 

Domestication  sometimes  has  the  bad  effect  of  converting  wild 
birds  to  Mormonism.  Thus  "  the  wild  duck  is  strictly  monogam- 
ous, the  domestic  duck  highly  polygamous." 

It  is  among  wild  birds  in  general  that  the  most  remarkable 
cases  of  conjugal  attachment  in  the  animal  world  are  found. 
And  since  most  birds  are  monogamous,  pairing  sometimes  even  for 
life,  we  may  hence  draw  the  important  conclusion  that  among 
animals,  as  among  men,  monogamy  seems  to  favour  the  develop- 
ment of  conjugal  love.  Polygamy,  on  the  other  hand,  everywhere 
introduces  jealousies,  rivalries,  discords.  Among  Oriental  nations 
where  polygamy  prevails,  each  wife  must  have  her  own  apartments, 
and  no  one  would  dare  to  taste  food  prepared  by  another,  for  fear 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS  87 

of  poison.  On  some  animals  polygamy  seems  to  have  a  similar 
effect,  for  we  read  that  "Mr.  Bartlett  believes  that  the  Lopho- 
phorus,  like  many  other  gallinaceous  birds,  is  naturally  polygamous, 
but  two  females  cannot  be  placed  in  the  same  cage  with  a  male,  as 
they  fight  so  much  together." 

COURTSHIP 

The  foregoing  illustrations,  many  of  which  show  the  gross 
injustice  lurking  in  our  expression  "  animal  passion,"  will  have 
prepared  the  reader's  mind  for  the  search  after  the  elements  of 
romantic  or  pre-nuptial  Love  in  animals. 

The  development  of  romantic,  as  distinguished  from  conjugal 
love,  depends  on  the  existence  of  a  more  or  less  prolonged  period  of 
courtship.  Where  this  is  absent  Love  is  absent,  as  among  the 
ancient  nations  and  those  of  the  moderns  who  lock  up  their  women 
until  they  are  ready  to  be  sold  to  a  husband,  at  sight. 

Among  animals  the  young  females  are  not  locked  up  or 
chaperoned.  They  are  free  to  meet  the  young  males  and  fall  in 
love  with  the  one  that  pleases  them  most. 

As  a  rule  the  preliminaries  to  animal  marriages  are  doubtless 
brief.  If  a  healthy,  vigorous  male  comes  across  a  mature,  healthy 
female,  it  is  usually  a  case  of  mutual  veni,  vidi,  vici. 

In  other  cases,  however,  courtship  is  a  more  prolonged  affair, 
owing  partly  to  the  coyness  of  the  female,  partly  to  the  rivalries 
among  the  male  suitors. 

Animal  courtship  is  carried  on  either  by  single  pairs  in  the 
romantic  shades  of  the  forests,  or  else  at  special  nuptial  mass 
meetings,  resembling  those  held  by  some  primitive  tribes  whose 
unmarried  young  people  assemble  on  certain  days  in  the  year  to 
select  partners.  Of  the  common  magpie,  for  instance,  Darwin 
relates  that  "  Some  years  ago  these  birds  abounded  in  extraordinary 
numbers,  so  that  a  gamekeeper  killed  in  one  morning  nineteen 
males,  and  another  killed  by  a  single  shot  seven  birds  roosting 
together.  They  then  had  the  habit  of  assembling  very  early  in 
the  spring  at  particular  spots,  where  they  could  be  seen  in  flocks, 
chattering,  sometimes  fighting,  bustling,  and  flying  about  the 
trees.  The  whole  affair  was  evidently  considered  by  the  birds  as  one 
of  the  highest  importance.  Shortly  after  the  meeting  they  all 
separated,  and  were  then  observed  by  Mr.  Fox  and  others  to  be 
paired  for  the  season." 

This  was  known  as  the  "great  magpie  marriage."  In  Ger- 
many and  Scandinavia  similar  assemblages  of  black  game  arc  so 


38  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

common  that  special  names  have  been  given  to  them.  "The 
bowers  of  the  bower-birds  are  the  resort  of  both  sexes  during  the 
oreeding  season  ;  and  here  the  males  meet  and  contend  with  each 
other  for  the  favours  of  the  females,  and  here  the  latter  assemble 
and  coquet  with  the  males." 

Two  more  cases  may  be  cited  :  "  With  one  of  the  vultures 
(Cathartes  aura)  of  the  United  States  parties  of  eight,  ten,  or 
more  males  and  females  assemble  on  fallen  logs,  ( exhibiting  the 
strongest  desire  to  please  mutually/  and  after  many  caresses  each 
male  leads  off  his  partner  on  the  wing.  Audubon  likewise  carefully 
observed  the  wild  flocks  of  Canada  geese,  and  gives  a  graphic 
description  of  their  love-antics ;  he  says  that  the  birds  which  had 
been  previously  mated  'renewed  their  courtship  as  early  as  the 
month  of  January,  while  the  others  would  be  contending  or 
coquetting  for  hours  every  day,  until  all  seemed  satisfied  with  the 
choice  they  had  made,  after  which,  although  they  remained  to- 
gether, any  person  could  easily  perceive  that  they  were  careful  to 
keep  in  pairs.  I  have  observed  also  that  the  older  the  birds  the 
shorter  were  the  preliminaries  of  their  courtship.  The  bachelors 
and  old  maids,  whether  in  regret  or  not  caring  to  be  disturbed  by 
the  bustle,  quietly  moved  aside  and  lay  down  at  some  distance 
from  the  rest.' " 

Separate  courtship  may  be  illustrated  by  the  following  cases, 
the  first  of  which  is  also  interesting  as  showing  that  it  is  not 
among  men  alone  that  the  female  occasionally  becomes  the  wooer; 
and  the  second  as  showing  how  early  in  the  scale  of  animal  life  a 
primitive  sort  of  courtship  may  be  found.  Concerning  a  wild  duck 
brought  up  in  captivity  Mr.  Hewitt  says  that  "  After  breeding  a 
couple  of  seasons  with  her  own  mallard,  it  at  once  shook  him  off 
on  my  placing  a  male  pintail  on  the  water.  It  was  evidently  a 
case  of  love  atjlrst  sight,  for  she  swam  about  the  newcomer  caress- 
ingly, though  he  appeared  evidently  alarmed  and  averse  to  her 
overtures  of  affection.  From  that  hour  she  forgot  her  old  partner. 
Winter  passed  by,  and  the  next  spring  the  pintail  seemed  to  have 
become  a  convert  to  her  blandishments,  for  they  nested  and  pro- 
duced seven  or  eight  young  ones." 

The  second  case  relates  to  the  landsnail,  concerning  which 
Agassiz  says  :  "  Quiconque  a  eu  1'occasion  d'observer  les  amours 
des  limae/ms  ne  saurait  mettre  en  doute  la  seduction  de'ploye'e  dans 
les  mouvements  et  les  allures  qui  pre'parent  et  accomplissent  le 
double  embrassement  de  ces  hermaphrodites." 

The  opportunities  for  prolonged  Courtship  being  thus  given,  the 
question  arises,  "  Do  animals,  while  a-wooing,  experience  the  same 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS  89 

feelings  as  a  human  lover?"  In  other  words,  Are  any  of  the  over- 
tones of  Romantic  Love  present  in  the  amorous  passion  of  animals  I 

Several  of  them  no  doubt  are  habitually  absent.  Animals  have 
not  sufficient  imagination  to  meditate  consciously  on  their  probable 
success  or  failure  in  Courtship;  and  this  lack  of  imaginative  power 
excludes  those  "  overtones  "  which  are  chiefly  dependent  on  that 
faculty;  notably  Sympathy  with  the  beloved's  feelings,  Pride  of 
Conquest  and  Possession,  Hyperbolic  Adoration,  Voluntary  Self- 
Sacrifice  for  the  other,  and  the  Woful  Ecstasy  of  Mixed  Moods. 
That  Gallantry,  or  the  Desire  to  Please,  may  be  present  is  shown 
by  the  words  I  have  italicised  in  the  quotation  just  made  regarding 
the  courtship  of  vultures,  and  is  further  shown  by  the  display  of 
their  ornamental  plumage  by  male  birds  to  excite  the  attention  of 
the  female.  Exclusiveness  of  affection  is  indicated  by  the  occa- 
sional indifference  of  the  wooer  to  every  rival;  and  when  we  read 
of  the  German  blackcock's  love-dances,  during  which,  "  the  more 
ardent  he  grows  the  more  lively  he  becomes,  until  at  last  the  bird 
appears  like  a  frantic  creature";  and  that  "at  such  times  the 
blackcocks  are  so  absorbed  that  they  become  almost  blind  and  deaf, 
but  less  so  than  the  capercailzie,"  so  that  "bird  after  bird  may  be 
shot  on  the  spot,  or  even  caught  by  the  hand " — when  we  read 
this,  we  feel  tempted  to  credit  these  birds  even  with  those  highest 
and  most  specialised  forms  of  lover's  madness  which  lead  to  obli- 
vion— Self-Sacrifice  and  Ecstatic  Adoration. 

The  four  traits  of  Romantic  Love  which  are  doubtless  present 
in  the  passion  of  animals  are  Jealousy,  Coyness,  Individual  Pre- 
ference, and  Admiration  of  Personal  Beauty. 

(a)  Jealousy. — Volumes  might  be  filled  with  accounts  of  the 
tragedies  brought  about  through  animal  rivalry  and  jealousy  during 
the  season  of  love.  "  The  courage  and  the  desperate  conflicts  of 
stags  have  often  been  described,"  says  Darwin ;  "  their  skeletons 
have  been  found  in  various  parts  of  the  world,  with  the  horns  in- 
extricably locked  together,  showing  how  miserably  the  victor  and 
vanquished  had  perished."  "  Male  sperm-whales  are  very  jealous" 
at  the  season  of  love ;  "  and  in  their  battles  *  they  often  lock  their 
jaws  together,  and  turn  on  their  sides  and  twist  about ' ;  so  that 
their  lower  jaws  often  become  distorted." 

When  birds  gaze  at  themselves  in  a  looking-glass,  as  they  often 
do,  the  same  authority  inclines  to  the  belief  that  they  do  it  from 
jealousy  of  a  supposed  rival;  and  Mr.  Jenner  Weir,  he  states,  "  is 
convinced  that  birds  pay  particular  attention  to  the  colours  of 
other  birds,  sometimes  out  of  jealousy,  and  sometimes  as  a  sign  of 
kinship;"  while  "many  naturalists  believe  that  the  singing  of 


40  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

birds  is  almost  exclusively  '  the  effect  of  rivalry  and  emulation/ 
and  not  for  the  sake  of  charming  their  mates." 

Animal  Jealousy  is  apparently  dependent  on  the  immediate 
cresence  of  the  rival  and  the  female;  while  the  Jealousy  of  a 
human  lover  is  also  a  matter  of  the  imagination,  and  smarts  even 
more  intensely  during  Her  absence;  for  his  morbid  fancy  then  loves 
to  picture  Her  in  the  arms  of  his  victorious  rival.  He  does  not, 
however,  except  in  some  southern  countries,  emulate  the  jealous 
lion  by  seeking  to  devour  his  rival,  but  is  contented  if  he  can  ward 
him  off  by  stratagem,  or  make  him  appear  in  a  disadvantageous 
light  in  Her  eyes. 

(b)  Coyness. — Just  as  the  Jealousy  displayed  by  two  animals 
fighting  for  a  female  is  a  gross,  primitive  emotion,  so  the  Coyness 
of  female  animals  is  crude  and  clumsy  compared  with  the  delicious 
subtlety  with  which  a  human  maiden  veils  a  Yes  under  an 
apparent  No.  Yet  it  plays  a  prominent  rdle  in  the  courtship  of 
animals. 

A  human  lover  would  often  consider  it  a  special  privilege  to  be 
eaten  up,  skin,  bones,  and  all,  by  his  mistress ;  but  it  is  doubtful 
whether  spiders  are  ever  madly  enough  in  love  to  relish  the  conduct 
of  their  females,  as  described  by  Darwin  :  "  The  male  is  generally 
much  smaller  than  the  female,  sometimes  to  an  extraordinary 
degree,  and  he  is  forced  to  be  extremely  cautious  in  making  his 
advances,  as  the  female  often  carries  her  coyness  to  a  dangerous 
pitch.  De  Geer  saw  a  male  that  '  in  the  midst  of  his  preparatory 
caresses  was  seized  by  the  object  of  his  attentions,  enveloped  by 
her  in  a  web,  and  then  devoured';  a  sight  which,  as  he  adds,  filled 
him  with  indignation  and  horror.  Female  fishes  also  are  apt  to 
give  a  cannibal  tinge  to  their  coyness  by  eating  up  the  smaller 
males — actions  to  which  remote  human  analogies  may  be  found  in 
the  coyness  of  medieval  dames,  who  sent  their  lovers  to  wars  and 
into  lions'  dens  as  conditions  of  enjoying  their  favours ;  or,  con- 
versely, in  the  habits  of  those  Australians  who  eat  their  wives 
after  they  have  ceased  to  be  either  ornamental  or  useful." 

Indubitable  evidences  of  Coyness  are  found  as  low  down  as 
among  insects ;  as,  for  example,  in  the  species  called  Smynthv.rnus 
luteus,  "  wingless,  dull-coloured,  minute  insects,  with  ugly,  almost 
misshapen  heads  and  bodies,"  concerning  which  Sir  John  Lubbock 
remarks :  "  It  is  very  amusing  to  see  these  little  creatures 
coquetting  together.  The  male,  which  is  much  smaller  than  the 
female,  runs  round  her,  and  they  butt  one  another  standing  face 
to  face  and  moving  backward  and  forward  like  two  playful  lambs. 
Then  the  female  pretends  to  run  away^and  the  male  runs  after 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS  41 

her  with  a  queer  appearance  of  anger,  gets  in  front  and  stands 
facing  her  again ;  then  she  turns  coyly  round,  but  he,  quicker  and 
more  active,  scuttles  round  too,  and  seems  to  whip  her  with  his 
antenna? ;  then  for  a  bit  they  stand  face  to  face,  play  with  their 
antennae,  and  seem  to  be  all  in  all  to  one  another." 

The  Coyness  of  birds  is  illustrated  by  the  following  cases  cited 
by  Biichner  from  Brehm  and  A.  and  K.  Miiller :  "A  genuine 
coquette  is  the  female  cuckoo,  who  answers  the  call  of  the  male 
with  a  peculiar  resonant,  tittering  or  laughing  love-call.  'The 
call  is  seducing,  promising  in  advance,  and  its  effect  on  the  male 
simply  enchanting.'  But  how  long  the  lovers  pursuing  the  siren 
have  to  wait  before  she  accepts  one  of  them  !  A  wild  flight 
begins,  among  bushes  and  tree-tops,  while  the  female  encourages 
the  pursuers  with  repeated  calls,  and  finally  gets  them  into  a  state 
of  erotic  excitement  bordering  on  madness.  At  the  same  time  the 
female  is  no  less  excited  than  her  frantic  suitors.  Her  favomite, 
no  doubt,  is  the  most  eager  of  the  lovers,  and  her  appaient 
resistance  simply  the  desire  to  excite  him  still  more  !  .  .  .  The 
female  of  the  icebird  (Alcedo  ispida)  often  teases  her  lover  half  a 
day  at  a  time,  by  repeatedly  approaching  him,  screaming  at  him, 
and  flying  away  again.  At  the  same  time  she  never  loses  sight  of 
him,  but  in  her  flight  casts  glances  at  him  backwards  and  side- 
wise,  moderates  the  rapidity  of  her  flight,  and  returns  in  a  wide 
curve  if  the  male  suddenly  ceases  from  his  pursuit." 

Could  anything  be  more  naively,  more  humanly,  more 
exquisitely  feminine  1  If  a  lover,  says  a  French  philosopher,  fails 
in  his  suit,  let  him  desist  for  a  moment,  and  she  will  presently 
call  him  back. 

No  inquiry  has  ever  been  made  by  naturalists,  so  far  as  I  am 
aware,  as  to  the  origin  of  Coyness  among  animals.  Two  probable 
sources  of  this  feeling  may  therefore  be  here  suggested.  The  first 
is  a  vague  instinctive  presentiment  (based  on  inherited  cerebral 
impressions)  that  with  mating  the  labours  of  life  will  begin  :  the 
painful  laying  of  eggs  ;  the  loss  of  liberty  during  incubation — an 
incalculable  loss  to  these  most  active  of  all  animals ;  and  the  care 
of  the  young,  which,  again,  is  not  a  trifling  matter,  inasmuch  as  a 
family  of  starlings,  for  example,  needs  for  its  daily  food  more  than 
eight  hundred  snails,  caterpillars,  etc. ;  and  birds  sometimes  perish 
from  exhaustion  in  the  attempt  to  feed  their  offspring. 

The  second  source  of  Coyness  is  probably  another  instinctive 
feeling  (based  on  inherited  experience)  which  induces  the  female 
to  defer  her  choice  until  the  combats  and  manoeuvres  of  the  males 
have  shown  which  one  is  the  most  energetic,  courageous,  and 


42  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

persistent :  for  he  will  obviously  be  best  able  to  support  her 
brood,  and  protect  it  as  well  as  herself  against  enemies.  Hence, 
during  the  combats  of  rival  males,  the  female  is  commonly  a 
passive  spectator,  and  at  the  end  quietly  marches  or  flies  off  with 
the  victor.  All  of  which,  by  the  way,  shows  that  among  animals 
already  masculine  love  is  deeper  than  feminine.  Indirectly,  it  is 
true,  feminine  Coyness  is  the  cause  of  Love — but  only  of  masculine 
Love ;  for  if  the  female  animal  always  accepted  the  first  male 
who  asked  her — 

"  My  pretty  maiden,  may  I  venture 
To  offer  you  my  arm  and  escort  ?  " 

there  would  be  no  opportunity  for  the  growth  of  pre-matrimonial 
passion. 

(c)  Individual  Preference. — Owing  to  our  scant  information 
concerning  the  courtship  of  animals  in  a  state  of  nature,  Darwin 
did  not  succeed  in  discovering  any  cases  among  mammals  of 
decided  preference  shown  by  a  male  for  any  particular  female ; 
and  regarding  domesticated  quadrupeds,  "  The  general  impression 
amongst  breeders  seems  to  be  that  the  male  accepts  any  female  ;' 
and  this,  owing  to  his  eagerness,  is,  in  most  cases,  probably  the 
truth."  A  few  cases  of  special  preference  or  antipathy  in  dog?, 
horses,  bulls,  and  boars,  were,  however,  communicated  to  him. 
Concerning  birds  Darwin  remarks  that  "  In  all  ordinary  cases  the 
male  is  so  eager  that  he  will  accept  any  female,  and  does  not,  as 
far  as  we  can  judge,  prefer  one  to  the  other,  but  .  .  .  exceptions 
to  this  rule  apparently  occur  in  some  few  groups.  With 
domesticated  birds,  I  have  heard  of  only  one  case  of  males 
showing  any  preference  for  certain  females,  namely,  that  of  the 
domestic  cock,  who,  according  to  the  high  authority  of  Mr. 
Hewitt,  prefers  the  younger  to  the  older  hens." 

This,  however,  is  at  best  only  a  polygamous  sort  of  Preference, 
which,  after  all,  lacks  the  essential  traits  of  Individualisation  and 
Exclusiveness.  With  the  long-tailed  duck  (Harelda  glacialis\ 
M.  Ekstrom  says,  "  It  has  been  remarked  that  certain  females  are 
much  more  courted  than  the  rest.  Frequently,  indeed,  one  sees 
an  individual  surrounded  by  six  or  eight  amorous  males." 
Whether  this  statement  is  credible  Darwin  does  not  know;  but 
the  Swedish  sportsmen,  he  adds,  shoot  these  females  and  stuft' 
them  as  decoys. 

In  female  animals,  on  the  other  hand,  the  "overtone"  of 
Individual  Preference  appears  to  be  more  frequently  present. 
Darwin  even  asserts  that  "  the  exertion  of  some  choice  on  the 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS  43 

part  of  the  female  seems  a  law  almost  as  general  as  the  eagerness 
of  the  male ; "  but  this  is  not  borne  out  by  the  numerous  illustra- 
tions given  by  himself,  showing  that  when  two  or  more  males  are 
engaged  in  jealous  combat,  "  the  female  looks  on  as  a  passive 
spectator,"  and  finally  goes  off  with  the  victor,  whichever  of  the 
rivals  he  may  prove  to  be,  without  showing  the  slightest  concern 
for  the  vanquished.  An  Australian  forest-maiden  might  behave 
similarly  under  these  circumstances,  but  a  civilised  maiden  would 
cling  to  the  one  who  had  made  the  deepest  impression  on  her 
previous  to  the  combat ;  and  if  wounded,  would  adore  him  all  the 
more ;  for  in  her  Love  pity  is  a  stronger  ingredient  than  even  the 
love  of  prowess. 

That  female  birds,  however,  sometimes  exert  a  choice  is  admitted 
even  by  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace  (Tropical  Nature,  p.  199);  and  a  few 
of  the  cases  referred  to  by  Darwin  may  here  be  cited  :  "  Audubon 
— and  we  must  remember  that  he  spent  a  long  life  in  prowling 
about  the  forests  of  the  United  States  and  observing  the  birds — 
does  not  doubt  that  the  female  deliberately  chooses  her  mate  ; 
thus,  speaking  of  a  woodpecker,  he  says  the  hen  is  followed  by  half 
a  dozen  gay  suitors,  who  continue  performing  strange  antics  'until 
a  marked  preference  is  shown  for  one.'  The  female  of  the  red- 
winged  starling  (Agelceus  phceniceus)  is  likewise  pursued  by  several 
males,  'until,  becoming  fatigued,  she  alights,  receives  their 
addresses,  and  soon  makes  a  choice.'  He  describes  also  how 
several  male  nightjars  repeatedly  plunge  through  the  air  with 
astonishing  rapidity,  suddenly  turning,  and  thus  making  a  singular 
noise ;  '  but  no  sooner  has  the  female  made  her  choice  than  the 
other  males  are  driven  away.' " 

Concerning  domesticated  birds  we  have  seen  that  that  gallina- 
ceous sultan,  the  domestic  cock,  shows  a  decided  preference  for  the 
younger  hens  in  his  harem.  But  the  female  is  not  a  bit  less 
frivolous  and  capricious ;  for,  according  to  Mr.  Hewitt,  she  almost 
invariably  prefers  the  most  vigorous,  defiant,  and  mettlesome  male; 
hence  it  is  almost  useless,  he  adds,  "  to  attempt  true  breeding  if  a 
game-cock  in  good  health  and  condition  runs  the  locality,  for 
almost  every  hen  on  leaving  the  roos ting-place  will  resort  to  the 
game-cock,  even  though  that  bird  may  not  actually  drive  away  the 
male  of  her  own  variety." 

(cl)  Personal  Beauty  and  Sexual  Selection. — Mr.  Wallace,  who 
discovered  the  law  of  Natural  Selection  independently  of  Darwin, 
admits,  as  just  stated,  that  "in  birds  the  females  do  sometimes 
exert  a  choice";  but  he  adds  that  "amid  the  copious  mass  of 
facts  and  opinions  collected  by  Mr.  Darwin  as  to  the  display  of 


14  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

colour  and  ornaments  by  the  male  birds,  there  is  a  total  absence  of 
any  evidence  that  the  females  admire  or  even  notice  this  display. 
The  hen,  the  turkey,  and  the  pea-fowl  go  on  feeding  while  the 
male  is  displaying  his  finery ;  and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
it  is  his  persistency  and  energy  rather  than  his  beauty  which  wins 
the  day." 

Briefly  stated,  the  difference  between  the  views  of  these  two 
eminent  naturalists  is  this :  Darwin  believes  that  in  those  cases 
where  the  sexes  are  not  alike,  the  differences  are  due  to  the  males, 
originally  plain,  having  become  modified  through  Sexual  Selection 
for  ornamental  purposes ;  while  Mr.  Wallace  believes  that  colour 
is  a  normal  product  in  animal  integuments,  proportionate  to  their 
vitality,  and  that  the  sexual  differences  in  ornamentation  are  due 
to  the  females  having  been  modified  through  Natural  Selection  for 
the  sake  of  protection. 

Perhaps  the  best  brief  resume  Darwin  has  made  of  his  views 
on  this  subject  is  given  on  page  421  of  the  Descent  of  Man 
(London  edition,  1885),  which  may  therefore  be  here  cited  in  full : 
"  If  an  inhabitant  of  another  planet  were  to  behold  a  number  of 
young  rustics  at  a  fair  courting  a  pretty  girl,  and  quarrelling  about 
her  like  birds  at  one  of  their  places  of  assemblage,  he  would,  by 
the  eagerness  of  the  wooers  to  please  her  and  to  display  their 
finery,  infer  that  she  had  the  power  of  choice.  Now  with  birds 
the  evidence  stands  thus :  they  have  acute  powers  of  observation, 
and  they  seem  to  have  some  taste  for  the  beautiful  both  in  colour 
and  sound.  It  is  certain  that  the  females  occasionally  exhibit,  from 
unknown  causes,  the  strongest  antipathies  and  preferences  for 
particular  males.  When  the  sexes  differ  in  colour  or  in  other 
ornaments,  the  males  with  rare  exceptions  are  the  more  decorated, 
either  permanently  or  during  the  breeding  season.  They  sedulously 
display  their  various  ornaments,  exert  their  voices,  and  perform 
strange  antics  in  the  presence  of  the  females.  Even  well-armed 
males  who,  it  might  be  thought,  would  altogether  depend  for 
success  on  the  law  of  battle,  are  in  most  cases  highly  ornamented; 
and  their  ornaments  have  been  acquired  at  the  expense  of  some 
loss  of  power.  In  other  cases  ornaments  have  been  acquired  at 
the  cost  of  increased  risk  from  birds  and  beasts  of  prey.  With 
various  species  many  individuals  of  both  sexes  congregate  at  the 
same  spot,  and  their  courtship  is  a  prolonged  affair.  There  ia 
even  reason  to  suspect  that  the  males  and  females  within  the  same 
district  do  not  always  succeed  in  pleasing  each  other  and  pairing. 

"  What  then  are  we  to  conclude  from  these  facts  and  considera- 
tions 1  Does  the  male  parade  his  charms  with  so  much  pomp  and 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS  45 

rivalry  for  no  purpose  ?  Are  we  not  justified  in  believing  that  the 
female  exerts  a  choice,  and  that  she  receives  the  addresses  of  the 
male  who  pleases  her  most1?  It  is  not  probable  that  she  consciously 
deliberates;  but  she  is  most  excited  or  attracted  by  the  most 
beautiful,  or  melodious,  or  gallant  males.  Nor  need  it  be  supposed 
that  the  female  studies  each  stripe  or  spot  of  colour;  that  the 
peahen,  for  instance,  admires  each  detail  in  the  gorgeous  train  of 
the  peacock — she  is  probably  struck  only  by  the  general  effect. 
Nevertheless,  after  hearing  how  carefully  the  male  Argus  pheasant 
displays  his  elegant  primary  wing-feathers,  and  erects  his  ocellated 
plumes  in  the  right  position  for  their  full  effect ;  or  again,  how  the 
male  goldfinch  alternately  displays  his  gold-bespangled  wings,  we 
ought  not  to  feel  too  sure  that  the  female  does  not  attend  to  each 
detail  of  beauty." 

Now  it  was  this  very  case  of  the  Argus  pheasant  that  first  shook 
Mr.  Wallace's  "  belief  in  c  sexual,'  or,  more  properly,  '  female ' 
selection.  The  long  series  of  gradations  by  which  the  beautifully- 
shaped  ocelli  on  the  secondary  wing-feathers  of  this  bird  have  been 
produced  are  clearly  traced  out;  the  result  being  a  set  of  markings 
so  exquisitely  shaded  as  to  represent  'balls  lying  loose  within 
sockets ' — purely  artificial  objects  of  which  these  birds  could  have 
no  possible  experience.  That  this  result  should  have  been  attained 
through  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  female  birds  all  pre- 
ferring those  males  whose  markings  varied  slightly  in  this  one 
direction,  this  uniformity  of  choice  continuing  through  thousands 
and  tens  of  thousands  of  generations,  is  to  me  absolutely  incredible. 
And  when,  further,  we  remember  that  those  who  did  not  so  vary 
would  also,  according  to  all  evidence,  find  mates  and  have  offspring, 
the  actual  result  seems  quite  impossible  of  attainment  by  such 
means." 

According  to  Darwin's  own  admission  (Descent  of  Man,  p. 
211),  he  advanced  the  theory  of  Sexual  Selection  because,  in  his 
opinion,  Natural  Selection  did  not  account  for  the  various  orna- 
ments and  attractions  of  the  males  in  question.  Mr.  Wallace, 
on  the  other  hand,  believes  that  Sexual  Selection  does  not,  while 
Natural  Selection  does  account  for  these  ornaments ;  so,  in  place 
of  Darwin's  view  that  the  beauty  of  certain  male  animals  leads 
the  females  to  prefer  them  to  their  less  ornamented  rivals,  he  sub- 
stitutes the  theory  that  it  is  the  superior  vitality,  persistence,  and 
vivacity  of  the  favoured  males  that  fascinate  the  females,  and  that 
masculine  beauty  is  simply  a  natural  result  of  superior  vigour  and 
superabundant  health. 

Darwin  doubtless  errs  in  claiming  an  aesthetic  sense  for  animals 

. 

•*  i  y 


46  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

so  low  in  the  scale  of  life  as  butterflies  and  other  insects,  and  in 
attributing  to  it  such  extraordinary  effects  in  the  development  of 
personal  beauty.  What  Mr.  Wallace  has  done  in  Tropical 
Nature  is  to  show  simply  that  it  is  quite  unnecessary  to  invoke 
the  aid  of  so  questionable  an  agency  as  Sexual  Selection  in  order 
to  account  for  the  ornaments  of  animals ;  and  that  the  funda- 
mental principle  of  Darwinism,  Natural  Selection,  accounts  for 
everything. 

He  maintains  that  colour  is  a  normal  product  of  organisation, 
and  that  not  so  much  its  presence  as  its  absence  needs  accounting 
for.  White  and  black  are  comparatively  rare  and  exceptional  in 
nature,  while  the  various  tints  of  red,  blue,  green,  etc.,  are 
continually  appearing  spontaneously  and  irregularly  in  the  integu- 
ments of  animals.  These  irregular  colours,  if  injurious  to  the 
species,  will  be  at  once  eliminated  by  Natural  Selection ;  but  if 
useful  for  purposes  of  identification  or  protection,  they  will  be 
preserved  and  intensified. 

Now  colour,  Mr.  Wallace  continues,  is  proportionate  to  integu- 
mentary development,  and  is  most  conspicuous  in  the  wings  of 
butterflies  and  the  feathers  of  birds,  for  the  reason  that,  just  as 
"  the  spots  and  rings  on  a  soap-bubble  increase  with  increasing 
tenuity,"  similarly  the  delicately-organised  surface  of  feathers  and 
scales  is  highly  favourable  to  the  production  of  varied  colour-effects. 

Colour  being  thus  proportionate  to  integumentary  development, 
we  find  next  that  integumentary  development  is,  in  turn,  propor- 
tionate to  vigour  and  vitality ;  the  strongest  animals  having  the 
largest  feathers,  scales,  horns,  etc.  Hence  the  most  vigorous  and 
healthy  animals  are  also  the  most  beautiful,  the  most  brilliantly 
coloured.  And  this  correlation  between  healthful  vigour  and 
beauty  is  still  more  strikingly  shown  in  this,  that  "  The  colours  of 
an  animal  usually  fade  during  disease  or  weakness,  while  robust 
health  and  vigour  adds  to  their  intensity.  ...  In  all  quadrupeds 
a  *  dull  coat '  is  indicative  of  ill-health  or  low  condition  ;  while  a 
glossy  coat  and  sparkling  eye  are  the  invariable  accompaniments 
of  health  and  energy.  The  same  rule  applies  to  the  feathers  of 
birds,  whose  colours  are  only  seen  in  their  purity  during  perfect 
health ;  and  a  similar  phenomenon  occurs  even  among  insects,  for 
the  bright  hues  of  caterpillars  begin  to  fade  as  soon  as  they 
become  inactive  preparatory  to  their  undergoing  transformation. 
Even  in  the  vegetable  kingdom  we  see  the  same  thing :  for  the 
tints  of  foliage  are  deepest,  and  the  colours  of  flowers  and  fruits 
richest,  on  those  plants  which  are  in  the  most  healthy  and 
vigorous  condition." 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS  47 

idd  to  all  these  considerations  that  "this  intensity  of  colora- 
tion becomes  most  developed  during  the  breeding  season,  when  the 
vitality  is  at  a  maximum,"  and  we  shall  be  prepared  for  Mr. 
Wallace's  summing  up  of  his  case  : — 

"  If  now  we  accept  the  evidence  of  Mr.  Darwin's  most  trust- 
worthy correspondents,  that  the  choice  of  the  female,  so  far  as  she 
exerts  any,  falls  upon  '  the  most  vigorous,  defiant,  and  mettlesome 
male  ' ;  and  if  we  further  believe,  what  is  certainly  the  case,  that 
these  are  as  a  rule  the  most  highly -coloured  and  adorned  with 
the  finest  developments  of  plumage,  we  have  a  real  and  not 
a  hypothetical  cause  at  work.  For  these  most  healthy,  vigorous, 
and  beautiful  males  will  have  the  choice  of  the  finest  and  most 
healthy  females ;  and  will  be  able  best  to  protect  and  rear  those 
families.  Natural  Selection,  and  what  may  be  termed  Male 
Selection,  will  tend  to  give  them  the  advantage  in  the  struggle 
for  existence ;  and  thus  the  fullest  and  the  finest  colours  will  be 
transmitted,  and  tend  to  advance  in  each  succeeding  generation." 

By  this  strong  chain  of  reasoning  (to  which  my  brief  resume  of 
course  cannot  do  justice)  Mr.  Wallace  shows  that  Darwin  need- 
lessly introduced  the  principle  of  Sexual  Selection  into  animal 
courtship ;  and  at  the  same  time  furnishes  a  new  confirmation  of 
Pnrwin's  compliment  that  he  has  "  an  innate  genius  for  solving 
difficulties." 

What  makes  Mr.  Wallace's  argument  the  more  cogent  is  the 
fact  that  Darwin  himself,  in  speaking  of  the  lowest  classes  of 
animals,  explains  their  beauty  on  the  same  principles  as  those 
which  Mr.  Wallace  applies  to  the  higher  animals.  Thus  he  says  : 
"  We  can,  in  our  ignorance  of  most  of  the  lowest  animals,  only 
say  that  their  bright  tints  result  either  from  the  chemical  nature 
or  the  minute  structure  of  their  tissues,  independently  of  any 
benefit  thus  derived."  "  It  is  almost  certain  that  these  animals 
have  too  imperfect  senses,  and  much  too  low  mental  powers,  to 
appreciate  each  other's  beauty  or  other  attractions,  or  to  feel 
rivalry."  "  Nor  is  it  at  all  obvious  how  the  offspring  from  the 
more  beautiful  pairs  of  hermaphrodites  would  have  any  advantage 
over  the  offspring  of  the  less  beautiful,  so  as  to  increase  in 
number,  unless  indeed  vigour  and  beauty  generally  coincided" 
And  once  more,  "  The  sedentary  annelids  become  duller-coloured, 
according  to  M.  Quatrefages,  after  the  period  of  reproduction ; 
and  this  I  presume  may  be  attributed  to  their  less  vigorous 
condition  at  that  time." 

So  far  we  have  only  considered  the  origin  of  animal  colours  in 
general  Mr.  Wallace,  however,  has  not  only  made  clear  the 


48  KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

general  connection  between  beautiful  and  vivid  colours  and  health, 
but,  by  utilising  his  own  researches  and  those  of  Mr.  Bates  and 
other  naturalists,  he  has  been  able  to  show  to  what  a  great  extent 
we  can  explain  even  the  particular  colours  of  the  various  classes 
of  animals.  He  distinguishes  four  classes  of  animal  colours — 
Protective,  Warning,  Sexual,  and  Typical 

(1)  Protective  Colours. — These  "  are  exceedingly  prevalent  in 
nature,  comprising  those  of  all  the  white  arctic  animals,  the  sandy- 
coloured  desert  forms,  and  the  green  birds  and  insects  of  tropical 
forests.     It  also  comprises  thousands  of  cases  of  special  resemblance 
— of  birds  to  the  surroundings  of  their  nests,  and  especially  of 
insects  to  the  bark,  leaves,  flowers,  or  soil  on  or  amid  which  they 
dwell.     Mammalia,  fishes,  and  reptiles,  as  well  as  mollusca,  present 
similar  phenomena ;  and  the  more  the  habits  of  animals  are  inves- 
tigated, the  more  numerous  are  found  to  be  the  cases  in  which  their 
colours  tend  to  conceal  them,  either  from  their  enemies  or  from  the 
creatures  they  prey  upon." 

(2)  Warning  Colours. — In  this  class,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
object  is  not  to  conceal  the  animal,  but  to  make  it  conspicuous. 
Certain  species  of  gorgeously-coloured  butterflies,  e.g.  are  never 
eaten  by  birds,  spiders,  lizards,  or  monkeys,  who  eagerly  feed  on 
other  butterflies.     "  The  reason  simply  is  that  they  are  not  fit  to 
eat,  their  juices  having  a  powerful  odour  and  taste  that  is  abso- 
lutely disgusting  to  all  these  animals.     Now  we  see  the  reason  of 
their  showy  colours  and  slow  flight.     It  is  good  for  them  to  be 
seen  and  recognised,  for  then  they  are  never  molested ;  but  if  they 
did  not  differ  in  form  and  colouring  from  other  butterflies,  or  if 
they  flew  so  quickly  that  their  peculiarities  could  not  be  easily 
noticed,  they  would  be  captured,  and  though  not  eaten,  would  be 
maimed  or  killed." 

Mimicry  is  the  name  given  to  a  second  and  still  more  marvellous 
class  of  Warning  Colours.  They  belong  to  defenceless  creatures 
which  so  closely  resemble  other  brightly-coloured  but  nauseous  or 
dangerous  animals  that  they  are  mistaken  for  the  latter,  and 
therefore  left  alone.  E.G.  "Wasps  are  imitated  by  moths,  and 
ants  by  beetles;  and  even  poisonous  snakes  are  mimicked  by 
harmless  snakes,  and  dangerous  hawks  by  defenceless  cuckoos." 

(3)  Typically-coloured  animals  are   those  species  which   are 
brilliantly  coloured   in   both   sexes,    "  and  for  whose   particular 
colours  we  can  assign  no  function  or  use."     This  group  "comprises 
an  immense  number  of  showy  birds,  such  as  Kingfishers,  Barbets, 
Toucans,  Lories,  Tits,  and  Starlings ;  among  insects  most  of  the 
largest  and  handsomest  butterflies,"  etc.     "It  is  a  suggestive  fact 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS  49 

that  all  the  brightly-coloured  birds  mentioned  above  build  in  holes 
or  form  covered  nests,  so  that  the  females  do  not  need  that  protec- 
tion during  the  breeding  season  which  I  believe  to  be  one  of  the 
chief  causes  of  the  dull  colour  of  female  birds  when  their  partners 
are  gaily  coloured." 

(4)  Sexual  Colours,  comprising  those  cases  in  which  the  sexes 
differ,  and  with  which  Darwin's  theory  of  Sexual  Selection  is 
directly  concerned.  Through  no  direct  fault  of  his  own,  Darwin 
leaves  on  his  readers  the  impression — which  has  become  almost  a 
commonplace  of  conversation — that  it  is  the  general  rule  among 
animals  for  the  males  of  each  species  to  be  more  ornamented  than 
the  females.  The  truth  is,  however,  that  "  with  the  exception  of 
butterflies,  the  sexes  are  almost  alike  in  the  great  majority  of 
insects.  The  same  is  the  case  in  mammals  and  reptiles ;  while 
the  chief  departure  from  the  rule  occurs  in  birds,  though  even  here 
in  very  many  cases  the  law  of  sexual  likeness  prevails." 

The  reason  why  I  have  devoted  so  much  space  to  Mr.  Wallace's 
colour  theories  is  to  emphasise  the  truth  contained  in  this  last 
sentence;  the  fact,  namely,  that  even  if  Sexual  Selection  were 
accepted  as  an  active  principle,  it  would  account  in  only  a  very 
limited  number  of  cases  for  the  personal  beauty  of  animals,  and 
the  reader  of  Mr.  Wallace's  Tropical  Nature  and  his  Contributions 
to  the  Theory  of  Natural  Selection  cannot  fail  to  be  convinced  that 
Sexual  Selection  does  not  even  hold  good  in  this  limited  number 
of  cases,  but  that  "  the  primary  cause  of  sexual  diversity  of  colour 
is  the  need  of  protection,  repressing  in  the  female  those  bright 
colours  which  are  normally  produced  in  both  sexes  by  general 
laws." 

Incidentally  Mr.  Wallace  mentions  as  an  additional  function  of 
colour  the  fact  that  it  may  serve  as  a  means  of  recognition  to  the 
sexes.  "  This  view  affords  us  an  explanation  of  the  curious  fact 
that  among  butterflies  the  females  of  closely-allied  species  in  the 
same  locality  sometimes  differ  considerably,  while  the  males  are 
much  alike ;  for,  as  the  males  are  the  swiftest,  and  by  far  the 
highest  flyers,  and  seek  out  the  females,  it  would  evidently  be 
advantageous  for  them  to  be  able  to  recognise  their  true  partners 
at  some  distance  off." 

To  me  it  seems  that  this  function  of  colour  is,  next  to  Protec- 
tion, its  most  important  object,  and  that  Mr.  Wallace  does  not 
give  it  sufficient  prominence.  He  says,  in  speaking  of  Typical 
Colours,  that  we  can  assign  "  no  function  or  use  for  them."  But 
why  should  they  not  serve  the  sexes  as  a  means  of  recognition  at 
at  a  distance  1  especially  as  colours  can  be  recognised  at  a  greater 


60  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

distance  than  forms.  Many  years  before  Darwin  and  Mr.  Wallace 
wrote  on  this  subject,  Schopenhauer's  genius  anticipated  this  view 
of  the  matter.  "  The  extremely  varied  and  vivid  colours  of  the 
feathers  of  tropical  birds,"  he  wrote,  "  have  been  explained  in  a 
very  general  way,  with  reference  to  their  efficient  cause,  as  due  to 
the  strong  effect  of  the  tropical  light.  As  their  final  cause  I  would 
suggest  that  these  brilliant  plumes  are  the  gala  uniforms  by  means 
of  which  the  species,  which  are  so  numerous  there  and  often  belong- 
ing to  the  same  genus,  recognise  each  other ;  so  that  every  male 
finds  his  female.  The  same  is  true  of  the  butterflies  of  different 
zones  and  latitudes"  (Welt  ah  Wille  u.  F".,  ii.  381). 

Schopenhauer  of  course  errs  in  attributing,  in  his  ignorance  of 
Protective,  Warning,  and  other  colours,  all  the  hues  of  birds  and 
butterflies  to  this  agency.  But  it  is  probable  that  whenever  colours 
and  other  ornaments  do  not  serve  for  purposes  of  protection  (as 
e.g.  the  lion's  mane  and  the  horns  of  beetles,  vide  Tropical  Nature, 
p.  202),  they  serve  the  purpose  of  sexual  recognition  of  species. 
A  case  cited  by  Darwin  to  prove  that  quadrupeds  take  notice  of 
colour,  is  very  suggestive  in  this  connection:  "A  female  zebra 
would  not  admit  the  addresses  of  a  male  ass  until  he  was  painted 
so  as  to  resemble  a  zebra,  and  then,  as  John  Hunter  remarks,  she 
received  him  very  readily." 

It  is  probable,  therefore,  that  in  many  cases  the  unique  spots 
and  stripes  and  colours  of  animals  subserve  the  special  use  of 
facilitating  the  finding  of  a  partner ;  and  in  this  way  they  relate 
directly  to  the  courtship  and  Romantic  Love  of  animals.  Thus 
we  see  how  the  Love  affairs  of  animals  may  indirectly  affect  their 
Personal  Beauty  in  a  way  quite  different  from  that  suggested  by 
Darwin. 

LOVE-CHARMS   AND   LOVE-CALLS 

The  same  reasoning  applies  to  the  music  of  animals,  vocal  and 
instrumental,  on  which  Darwin  lays  great  stress.  In  his  opinion, 
the  music  of  some  male  animals  serves  to  charm  the  females 
aesthetically,  and  thus  gives  to  the  best  musicians  special  advan- 
tages through  Sexual  Selection.  But  the  instances  cited  by  him 
hardly  warrant  this  conclusion,  and  seem  rather  to  point  to  the 
inference  that  the  function  of  animal  music  is  chiefly  to  facilitate 
courtship,  by  making  it  easy  for  the  females  to  discover  the  where- 
abouts of  a  male  of  the  same  species.  The  evidence  tends  to  show 
that  it  is  not  the  male  whose  voice  is  most  mellow  and  melodious 
that  catches  the  female,  but  rather  the  one  who  is  most  vigorous 
and  persistent  and  has  the  loudest  organ.  As  Jaques  says  in  As 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS  51 

You  Like  It:  "Sing  it :  'tis  no  matter  how  it  be  in  tune,  so  it 
make  noise  enough  !" 

Darwin  himself  quotes  a  naturalist's  statement,  that  "the 
stridulation  produced  by  some  of  the  Locustidce  is  so  ]oud  that  it 
can  be  heard  during  the  night  at  the  distance  of  a  mile  ;"  and  such 
cases  as  "the  drumming  of  the  snipe's  tail,  the  tapping  of  the 
woodpecker's  beak,  the  harsh,  trumpetlike  cry  of  certain  water- 
fowl," though  Darwin  tries  to  dispose  of  them  on  the  ground  of  a 
difference  in  aesthetic  taste,  nevertheless  incline  one  to  the  belief 
that  the  music  of  the  forest  troubadours  is  not  so  much  intended 
to  gratify  the  aesthetic  taste  of  the  female  as  to  guide  her  to  the 
spot  where  the  male  awaits  her ;  for,  contrary  to  common  opinion, 
it  is  the  female  in  these  cases  that  searches  for  a  male  and  not  vice 
versd.  Montagu,  for  instance,  asserts  that  "males  of  song-birds 
and  of  many  others  do  not  in  general  search  for  the  female,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  their  business  in  spring  is  to  perch  on  some  conspicu- 
ous spot,  breathing  out  their  full  and  amorous  notes,  which,  by 
instinct,  the  female  knows,  and  repairs  to  the  spot  to  choose  her 
mate."  And  Dr.  Hartman,  speaking  of  the  American  Cicada 
septemdecim,  says :  "  The  drums  are  now  heard  in  all  directions. 
This  I  believe  to  be  the  marital  summons  from  the  males.  Stand- 
ing in  thick  chestnut  sprouts  about  as  high  as  my  head,  where 
hundreds  were  around  me,  1  observed  the  females  coming  around 
the  drumming  males."  And,  says  Darwin,  "  the  spel  of  the  black- 
cock certainly  serves  as  a  call  to  the  female,  for  it  has  been  known 
to  bring  four  or  five  females  from  a  distance  to  a  male  under  con- 
finement ;  but  as  the  blackcock  continues  his  spel  for  hours  during 
successive  days,  and  in  the  case  of  the  capercailzie  '  with  an  agony 
of  passion,'  we  are  led  to  suppose  that  the  females  which  are  present 
are  thus  charmed." 

There  appears  to  be  no  direct  evidence,  however,  that  female 
birds  are  more  charmed  by  one  male  than  another,  and  prefer  him 
on  account  of  his  superior  song,  as  the  theory  of  Sexual  Selection 
postulates.  And  when  we  remember  that  likewise  there  is  no 
evidence  that  birds,  etc.,  are  ever  influenced  in  their  choice  by  the 
superior  colours  of  certain  males,  and  that  in  fact  it  is  the  rule  for 
the  female  to  follow  passively  the  most  vigorous  and  victorious 
male,  we  are  brought  back  to  the  conclusion  with  which  we  set 
out — that  it  is  not  the  superior  songster  who  wins  the  female  by 
charming  her,  but  the  loudest  and  most  persistent  songster,  by 
guiding  her  to  the  courting-place. 

Darwin  himself  evidently  felt  the  weakness  of  his  position,  for 
he  constantly  speaks  of  "  love-charms  or  love-calls "  in  the  same 


62  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

sentence.  Thus,  "  the  true  song  of  most  birds  and  various  strange 
cries  are  uttered  chiefly  during  the  breeding-season,  and  serve  as  a 
charm,  or  merely  as  a  call-note,  to  the  other  sex."  Again  :  "  It 
is  often  difficult  to  conjecture  whether  the  many  strange  cries  and 
notes  uttered  by  male  birds  during  the  breeding-season  serve  as  a 
charm  or  merely  as  a  call  to  the  female."  The  distinction  between 
love  "charms"  and  mere  "calls"  is  of  course  of  the  utmost 
importance.  For  if  male  song  charms  the  females  and  influences 
them  in  their  choice,  we  have  Sexual-sesthetic-female  Selection. 
But  if  the  male  song  merely  serves  as  a  call  to  the  female  and  as 
a  sign  of  species-recognition,  then  Natural  Selection  accounts  for 
everything,  because  the  most  vigorous,  loudest,  and  most  persistent 
male  will  have  the  choice  of  the  most  numerous  females  brought 
to  his  side  by  his  musical  efforts. 

LOVE-DANCES   AND   DISPLAY 

There  is  one  more  important  link  in  the  chain  of  Darwin's 
reasoning,  which  must  be  broken  before  his  theory  of  Sexual 
Selection  can  be  regarded  as  demolished.  The  mad  antics  of  the 
blackcock  and  other  birds  have  been  already  referred  to ;  and  some 
of  the  lower  animals  seem  to  endeavour  to  surpass  them,  as,  for 
example,  the  male  alligator,  who  strives  to  attract  the  attention  of 
the  female  by  splashing  and  roaring  in  the  water ;  "  swollen  to  an 
extent  ready  to  burst,  with  its  head  and  tail  lifted  up,  he  spins  or 
twirls  round  on  the  surface  of  the  water,  like  an  Indian  chief 
rehearsing  his  feats  of  war."  "  To  suppose,"  says  Darwin,  "  that 
the  females  do  not  appreciate  the  beauty  of  the  males,  is  to 
admit  that  their  splendid  decorations,  all  their  pomp  and  display, 
are  useless ;  and  this  is  incredible." 

But  are  there  no  other  ways  of  accounting  for  all  this  "  pomp 
and  display"  1  Certainly,  several  of  them.  We  have  seen  that 
tie  most  vigorous  males  are  those  which  are  most  highly  orna- 
mented, and  that  it  is  the  vigour  and  vivacity  of  the  males  that 
seems  to  decide  the  choice  of  the  females  where  there  is  any.  Now 
instinct,  i.e.  inherited  experience,  teaches  the  female  the  connec- 
tion between  vigour  and  display  of  ornament,  and  influences  her 
choice  accordingly.  Again,  the  males  indulge  in  their  display  for 
the  purpose  of  arousing  the  attention  of  the  passive  female.  This 
supposition  is  rendered  the  more  probable  by  Darwin's  admission 
that  "  we  must  be  cautious  in  concluding  that  the  wings  are  spread 
out  solely  for  display,  as  some  birds  do  BO  whose  wings  are  not 
beautiful," 


LOVE  AMONG  ANIMALS  53 

A  third  motive  of  display  is  the  need  of  finding  an  outlet  for 
overflowing  nervous  energy  and  excitement.  To  this  Mr.  Wallace 
refers  as  follows  :  "  At  pairing  time  the  male  is  in  a  state  of  excite- 
ment and  full  of  exuberant  energy.  Even  unornamented  birds 
flutter  their  wings  or  spread  them  out,  erect  their  tails  or  crests, 
and  thus  give  vent  to  the  nervous  excitability  with  which  they  are 
<T7ercharged."  "It  is  not  improbable,"  he  continues, — and  this 
suggests  a  fourth  use  of  display — "  that  crests  and  other  erectile 
feathers  may  be  primarily  of  use  in  frightening  away  enemies, 
since  they  are  generally  erected  when  angry  or  during  combat." 

A  fifth  motive  of  display  is  suggested  by  an  analogy  furnished 
by  human  butterflies  and  birds  of  Paradise.  Among  animals 
where  the  sexes  differ,  it  is  commonly  the  male  who  is  adorned  the 
most.  AVith  us  it  is  the  women.  But  woman's  fineries  are  not 
intended  to  charm  the  eyes  of  men,  but  to  excite  one  another's 
rivalry  and  envy.  Now  it  seems  that  male  birds,  with  whose 
plumes  our  heartless  women  are  so  fond  of  decking  themselves,  are 
guilty  of  an  analogous  weakness.  They  will  sometimes  display 
their  ornaments,  says  Darwin,  "when  not  in  the  presence  of  the 
females,  as  occasionally  occurs  with  grouce  at  their  boly  places, 
and  as  may  be  noticed  with  the  peacock ;  this  latter  bird,  how- 
ever, evidently  wishes  for  a  spectator  of  some  kind,  and,  as  I  have 
often  seen,  will  show  off  his  finery  before  poultry  or  even  pigs. 
All  naturalists  who  have  closely  attended  to  the  habits  of  birds, 
whether  in  a  state  of  nature  or  under  confinement,  are  unanimously 
of  opinion  that  the  males  take  delight  in  displaying  their  beauty/ 
And,  once  more,  "with  birds  of  Paradise  a  dozen  or  more  full- 
plumaged  males  congregate  in  a  tree  to  hold  a  dandng-party,  as  it 
is  called  by  the  natives ;  and  here  they  fly  about,  raise  their  wings, 
elevate  their  exquisite  plumes,  and  make  them  vibrate ;  and  the 
whole  tree  seems,  as  Mr.  Wallace  remarks,  to  be  filled  with 
waving  plumes." 

But  if  it  be  the  unanimous  opinion  of  naturalists  who  have 
closely  studied  the  habits  of  birds,  "  that  the  males  take  delight  in 
displaying  their  beauty,"  why  should  not  the  females  also  take 
pleasure  in  witnessing  this  display  1  Perhaps  they  do,  sometimes  ; 
for  even  Mr.  Wallace  admits  that  "  the  display  of  the  various 
ornamental  appendages  of  the  male  during  courtship  may  be 
attractive "  to  the  female.  But  there  is  a  world-wide  difference 
between  this  assertion  and  the  doctrine  that  the  females  are  so 
greatly  and  so  constantly  influenced  by  their  aesthetic  taste  that 
they  always  prefer  among  males  those  that  are  slightly  more  beau- 
tiful than  the  others,  thus  increasing  their  personal  beauty  by 


64  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

transmission.  This  is  an  assumption  unsupported  by  facts,  and 
rendered  unnecessary  because  Natural  Selection  accounts  for  all  the 
phenomena  in  question. 

Admiration  of  Personal  Beauty  does  not  appear,  therefore,  to 
enter  noticeably  into  animal  love,  except  in  so  far  as  a  slight 
amount  of  sesthetic  taste  may  be  admitted  in  birds.  This  taste 
may  be  strengthened  by  the  sight  of  the  brilliant  masculine  orna- 
ments during  the  season  of  love  being  associated  with  the 
remembered  pleasures  of  courtship. 

Indirectly,  however,  female  animals  promote  the  cause  of  beauty 
by  preferring  the  more  healthy  and  vigorous  individuals,  who  are 
commonly  also  the  most  beautiful  ones.  And  is  not  the  same  true 
of  females  of  the  human  persuasion,  who  likewise  are  much  less 
influenced  in  their  choice  by  the  beauty  than  by  the  boldness, 
energy,  vivacity,  and  "  manliness  "  of  their  suitors  1  It  seems  to 
hold  true  throughout  nature  that  the  female's  Love  is  weak  in  the 
sesthetic  element,  her  taste  being  little  developed  and  too  often 
neutralised  by  unconscious  utilitarian  considerations. 


LOVE  AMONG  SAVAGES 

STEANGEES   TO  LOVE 

In  passing  from  animals  to  human  beings  we  find  at  first  not 
only  no  advance  in  the  sexual  relations,  but  a  decided  retrogres- 
sion. Among  some  species  of  birds,  courtship  and  marriage  are 
infinitely  more  refined  and  noble  than  among  the  lowest  savages  ; 
and  it  is  especially  in  their  treatment  of  females,  both  before  and 
after  mating,  that  not  only  birds  but  all  animals  show  an  immense 
superiority  over  primitive  man ;  for  male  animals  only  fight 
among  themselves,  and  never  maltreat  the  females. 

This  anomaly  is  easily  explained.  The  intellectual  power  and 
emotional  horizon  of  animals  are  limited ;  but  in  those  directions 
in  which  Natural  Selection  has  made  them  specialists,  they  reach 
a  high  degree  of  development,  because  inherited  experience  tends 
to  give  to  their  actions  an  instinctive  or  quasi-instinctive  precision 
and  certainty.  Among  primitive  men,  on  the  other  hand,  reason 
begins  to  encroach  more  on  instinct,  but  yet  in  such  a  feeble  way 
as  to  make  constant  blunders  inevitable  :  thus  proving  that  strong 
instincts,  combined  with  a  limited  intellectual  plasticity,  are  a 
safer  guide  in  life  than  a  more  plastic  but  weak  intellect  minus 
the  assistance  of  stereotyped  instincts. 

If  neither  intellect  nor  instinct  guide  the  primitive  man  to 


LOVE  AMONG  SAVAGES  5ff 

well-regulated  marital  relations,  such  as  we  find  among  many 
animals,  so  again  his  emotional  life  is  too  crude  and  limited  to 
allow  any  scope  for  the  domestic  affections.  Inasmuch  as, 
according  to  Sir  John  Lubbock,  gratitude,  mercy,  pity,  chastity, 
forgiveness,  humility,  are  ideas  or  feelings  unknown  to  many  or 
most  savage  tribes,  we  should  naturally  expect  that  such  a  highly- 
compounded  and  ethereal  feeling  as  Romantic  Love  could  not  exist 
among  them.  How  could  Love  dwell  in  the  heart  of  a  savage 
who  baits  a  fish-hook  with  the  flesh  of  a  child  ;  who  eats  his  wife 
when  she  has  lost  her  beauty  and  the  muscular  power  which 
enabled  her  to  do  all  his  hard  work;  who  abandons  his  aged 
parents,  or  kills  them,  and  whose  greatest  delight  in  life  is  to  kill 
an  enemy  slowly  amid  the  most  diabolic  tortures  ? 

Or  how  could  a  primitive  girl  love  a  man  whose  courtship 
consists  in  knocking  her  on  the  head  and  carrying  her  forcibly 
from  her  own  to  his  tribe  ?  A  man  who,  after  a  very  brief  period 
of  caresses,  neglects  her,  takes  perhaps  another  and  younger  wife, 
and  reduces  the  first  one  to  the  condition  of  a  slave,  refusing  to 
let  her  eat  at  his  table,  throwing  her  bones  and  remains,  as  to  a 
dog,  or  even  driving  her  away  and  killing  her,  if  she  displeases 
him  1  These  are  extreme  cases,  but  they  are  not  rare ;  and  in  a 
slightly  modified  form  they  are  found  throughout  savagedom. 

That  Love  is  a  sentiment  unknown  to  savages  has  been 
frequently  noted  in  the  works  of  anthropologists  and  tourists. 
When  Ploss  remarks  that  the  lowest  savages  "  know  as  little  of 
marriage  relations  as  animals ;  still  less  do  they  know  the  feeling 
we  call  Love,"  he  does  a  great  injustice  to  animals,  as  those  who 
have  read  the  preceding  chapter  must  admit.  Letourneu,  in  his 
Sociologie,  remarks  :  "  Among  the  Cafres  Cousas.  according  to 
Lichtenstein,  the  sentiment  of  love  does  not  constitute  a  part  of 
marriage.  '  The  idea  of  love,  as  we  understand  it,'  says  Du 
Chaill u,  in  speaking  of  a  tribe  of  the  Gabon,  *  appears  to  be 
unknown  to  this  tribe/  "  Montetro,  speaking  of  the  polygamous 
tribes  of  Africa,  says  :  "  The  negro  knows  not  love,  affection,  or 
jealousy.  ...  In  all  the  long  years  I  have  been  in  Africa  I  have 
never  seen  a  negro  manifest  the  least  tenderness  for  or  to  a 
negress  ....  I  have  never  seen  a  negro  put  his  arm  round  a 
woman's  waist,  or  give  or  receive  any  caress  whatever  that  would 
indicate  the  slightest  loving  regard  or  affection  on  either  side. 
They  have  no  words  or  expressions  in  their  language  indicative  of 
affection  or  love." 

Mr.  Spencer,  in  commenting  on  this  passage,  remarks  that 
"  This  testimony  harmonises  with  testimonies  cited  by  Sir  John 


66  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Lubbock,  to  the  effect  that  the  Hottentots  *  are  so  cold  and 
indifferent  to  one  another  that  you  would  think  there  was  no  such 
thing  as  love  between  them ' ;  that  among  the  Koussa  Kaffirs 
there  is  'no  feeling  of  love  in  marriage';  and  that  in  Yariba,  *a 
man  thinks  as  little  of  taking  a  wife  as  of  cutting  an  ear  of  corn — 
affection  is  altogether  out  of  the  question.'  " 

Mr.  Winwood  Eeade,  on  the  other  hand,  informed  Darwin 
that  the  West  Africans  "  are  quite  capable  of  falling  in  love,  and 
of  forming  tender,  passionate,  and  faithful  attachments."  And 
the  anthropologist  Waitz,  speaking  of  Polynesia,  says  that 
"  examples  of  real  passionate  love  are  not  rare,  and  on  the  Fiji 
Islands  it  has  happened  that  individuals  married  against  their  will 
have  committed  suicide ;  although  this  has  only  happened  in  the 
higher  classes."  Unfortunately  in  these  cases  we  are  left  in 
doubt  as  to  whether  the  reference  is  to  Conjugal  or  to  Romantic 
Love ;  conjugal  attachment,  being  of  earlier  growth  than 
Romantic  Love,  because  the  development  of  the  latter  was 
retarded  by  the  limited  opportunities  for  prolonged  Courtship  and 
free  Choice. 

PRIMITIVE    COURTSHIP 

In  his  anxiety  to  find  cases  of  Romantic  Love  among^  North 
American  and  other  primitive  peoples,  Waitz  is  obligedw1;o  fall 
back  on  legends  of  Lovers'  Leaps  and  Maiden  Rocks,  and  on  a 
poem  about  a  South  American  maiden  who  committed  suicide  on 
her  lover's  grave  to  avoid  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  Spaniards. 
Legends  and  poems,  unfortunately,  do  not  count  for  much  as 
scientific  evidence.  At  the  same  time,  it  would  doubtless  be 
incorrect  to  assert  on  the  strength  of  some  of  the  authorities  just 
quoted  that  Love  does  not  exist  at  all  among  savages,  and  there- 
fore to  make  the  chapter  on  Love  among  Savages  as  brief  as  that 
chapter  on  Snakes  in  Ireland.  We  shall  find,  on  the  contrary, 
that  several  of  Love's  "  overtones  "  are  occasionally  present ;  and 
that  though  full-fledged  cupids  may  never  appear  with  their 
poisoned  arrows,  mischievous  amourettes  sometimes  do  flit  across 
the  field  of  vision.  For  the  goddess  of  Love  is  ever  watchful  of 
an  opportunity  for  one  of  her  emissaries  to  bag  some  game. 

Romantic  Love  is  dependent  on  opportunities  for  Courtship. 
Amon^  savages  and  semi-civilised  nations  we  find  three  grades  of 
Courtship — Capture,  Purchase,  and  Service.  These  must  be 
briefly  examined  in  turn. 

(1)  Capture. — One  of  the  most  curious  features  of  savage  life 
is  the  widely-prevalent  custom  called  by  M'Lennan  Exogamy,  or 


LOVE  AMONG  SAVAGES  57 

marrying  out.  This  custom  compels  a  man  who  wishes  a  wife  of 
his  own  to  steal  or  purchase  her  of  another  tribe,  private  marriage 
within  his  own  tribe  being  considered  criminal  and  even  punish- 
able with  death.  To  this  rule  of  Exogamy  Sir  John  Lubbock 
traces  the  origin  of  Monogamy.  In  his  view  women  were  at  first, 
like  other  kinds  of  property,  held  in  common  by  the  tribe,  any 
man  being  any  woman's  husband  ad  libitum.  No  man  could 
therefore  claim  a  woman  for  himself  without  infringing  on  the 
rights  of  others.  But  if  he  stole  a  woman  from  another  tribe,  she 
became  his  exclusive  property,  which  he  had  a  right  to  guard 
jealously,  and  to  look  upon  with  the  Pride  of  Conquest — a  pride, 
however,  quite  distinct  from  that  which  intoxicates  a  civilised 
lover  when  he  finds,  or  fondly  imagines,  that  his  goddess  has 
chosen  him  among  all  his  rivals.  The  primitive  man's  pride  is 
more  like  that  of  the  warrior  who  wears  a  large  number  of  scalps 
in  his  belt;  and  as  in  his  case  marriage  immediately  follows 
Capture,  this  feeling,  moreover,  belongs  more  properly  to  the 
sphere  of  conjugal  sentiment  than  to  that  of  Love. 

This  primitive  form  of  courtship,  it  is  obvious,  is  very  much 
ruder  than  that  which  prevails  in  the  animal  kingdom,  where  the 
males  alone  maltreat  one  another,  while  in  this  early  human 
courtship  the  woman,  if  she  resists,  is  simply  knocked  on  the 
head,  ,and  her  senseless  body  carried  off  to  the  captor's  tent. 
Diefenbach  relates  concerning  the  Polynesians  that  "  if  a  girl  was 
courted  by  two  suitors,  each  of  them  grasped  one  arm  of  the 
beloved  and  pulled  her  toward  him  ;  the  stronger  one  got  her,  but 
in  some  cases  not  before  her  limbs  had  been  pulled  out  of  joint." 
And  Waitz  says  that  "the  girls  were  commonly  abducted  by 
force,  which  led  frequently  to  most  violent  fights,  in  which  the 
girl  herself  was  occasionally  wounded,  or  even  killed,  to  prevent 
her  from  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy." 

Mr.  E.  B.  Tylor,  after  stating  that  marriage  by  Capture  may 
be  seen  at  the  present  day  among  the  fierce  forest  tribes  of  Brazil, 
continues  :  "  Ancient  tradition  knows  this  practice  well,  as  where 
the  men  of  Benjamin  carry  off  the  daughters  of  Shiloh  dancing  at 
the  feast,  and  in  the  famous  Roman  tale  of  the  rape  of  the 
Sabines,  a  legend  putting  in  historical  form  the  wife-capture  which 
in  Roman  custom  remained  as  a  ceremony.  What  most  clearly 
shows  what  a  recognised  old-world  custom  it  was,  is  its  being  thus 
kept  up  as  a  formality  where  milder  manners  really  prevailed. 
It  had  passed  into  this  state  among  the  Spartans,  when  Plutarch 
says  that  though  the  marriage  was  really  by  friendly  settlement 
between  the  families,  the  bridegroom's  friends  went  through  the 


68  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

pretence  of  carrying  off  the  bride  by  violence.  Within  a  few 
generations  the  same  old  habit  was  kept  up  in  Wales,  where  the 
bridegroom  and  his  friends,  mounted  and  armed  as  for  war,  carried 
off  the  bride  ;  and  in  Ireland  they  used  even  to  hurl  spears  at  the 
bride's  people,  though  at  such  a  distance  that  no  one  was  hurt, 
except  now  and  then  by  accident,  as  happened  when  one  Lord 
Howth  lost  an  eye,  which  mischance  seems  to  have  put  an  end 
to  this  curious  relic  of  antiquity." 

Moreover,  we  are  told  that  "in  our  own  marriages  the  'best 
man '  seems  originally  to  have  been  the  chief  abettor  of  the  bride- 
groom in  the  act  of  capture." 

In  a  modified  form  "  wife-capture  "  cannot  be  said  to  be  extinct 
even  in  this  advanced  age.  Elopement  is  the  modern  name  for  it. 
When  the  parents  dissent  and  the  couple  are  very  young,  this 
climax  of  courtship  doubtless  is  often  reprehensible.  But  in  those 
cases  where  the  consent  of  all  parties  has  been  obtained,  it  ought 
to  be  universally  adopted.  Sudden  flight  and  an  impromptu  mar- 
riage would  add  much  to  the  romance  of  the  honeymoon,  and  would 
enable  the  bridal  couple  to  avoid  the  terrors  and  stupid  formalities 
of  the  wedding-day,  the  anticipation  of  which  is  doubtless  respon- 
sible for  the  ever-increasing  number  of  cowardly  bachelors  in  the 
world. 

(2)  Purchase  represents  a  somewhat  higher  stage  of  Courtship 
than  Capture.     Like  Capture  this  custom  has  existed  among  the 
peoples  of  the  five  continents,  and  is  still  retained  in  some  parts  of 
Africa  and  elsewhere.     In  Holstein,  Germany,  it  prevailed  in  all 
its  purity,  according  to  Ploss,  till  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
Nor  would  it  be  doing  facts  great  violence  to  class  our  frequent 
money-marriages  under  this  head. 

There  are  two  grades  of  the  custom  of  Purchase.  In  the  first 
the  girl  has  no  choice  whatever,  but  is  sold  by  her  father  for  so 
many  cows  or  camels,  in  some  cases  to  the  highest  bidder.  Among 
the  Turcomans  a  wife  may  be  purchased  for  five  camels  if  she  be 
a  girl,  or  for  fifty  if  a  widow ;  whereas  among  the  Tunguse  a  girl 
costs  one  to  twenty  reindeer,  while  widows  are  considerably 
cheaper.  In  the  second  class  of  cases  the  purchased  girl  is  allowed 
a  certain  degree  of  liberty  of  choice,  as  we  shall  see  directly,  under 
the  head  of  Individual  Preference. 

(3)  Service. — On  the  custom  of  securing  a  wife  by  means  of 
services  rendered  her  parents,  Mr.  Spencer  remarks :  "  The  prac- 
tice which  Hebrew  tradition  acquaints  us  with  in  the  case  of 
Jacob,  proves  to  be  a  widely-diffused  practice.      It  is  general  with 
the  Bhils,  Ghonds,  and  Hill  tribes  of  Nepaul ;  it  obtained  in  Java 


LOVE  AMONG  SAVAGES  69 

before  Mahometanism  was  introduced ;  it  was  common  in  ancient 
Peru  and  Central  America ;  and  among  sundry  existing  American 
races  it  still  occurs.  Obviously,  a  wife  long  laboured  for  is  likely 
to  be  more  valued  than  one  stolen  or  bought.  Obviously,  too,  the 
period  of  service,  during  which  the  betrothed  girl  is  looked  upon 
as  a  future  spouse,  affords  room  for  the  growth  of  some  feeling 
higher  than  the  merely  instinctive — initiates  something  approaching 
to  the  courtship  and  engagement  of  civilised  peoples." 

INDIVIDUAL  PREFERENCE 

All  the  cases  thus  far  referred  to  relate  to  what  might  be  called 
indirect  or  mediate  courtship.  When  a  girl  is  captured  and 
knocked  on  the  head  she  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  courted  and  con- 
sulted as  to  her  wishes ;  and  the  man  too,  in  such  cases,  owing  to 
the  dangers  of  the  sport,  is  apt  to  pay  no  great  attention  to 
a  woman's  looks  and  accomplishments,  but  to  bag  the  first  one 
that  conies  along.  In  courtship  by  Purchase,  again,  the  girl  is 
rarely  consulted  as  to  her  own  preferences,  the  addresses  being 
paid  to  the  father,  who  invariably  selects  the  wealthiest  of  the 
suitors,  and  only  in  rare  cases  allows  the  daughter  a  choice,  as 
among  the  Kaffirs  if  the  suitors  happen  to  be  equally  well  off. 
And  thirdly,  in  courtship  by  Service,  the  suitor's  work  is  not  done 
to  please  the  daughter,  but  to  recompense  the  parents  for  losing 
her. 

Yet  there  appear  to  be  some  instances  of  real  courtship,  in  the 
modern  sense  of  the  word,  among  the  lower  races,  where  the  lovers 
pay  their  addresses  directly  to  the  girl  and  she  chooses  or  rejects 
at  will.  Thus,  among  the  Orang-Sakai,  on  the  Malayan  peninsula, 
the  following  custom  prevails,  as  described  by  Ploss :  "  On  the 
wedding-day,  the  bride,  in  presence  of  her  relatives,  and  those  of 
her  lover,  and  many  other  witnesses,  is  obliged  to  run  into  the 
forest.  After  a  fixed  interval  the  bridegroom  follows  and  seeks  to 
catch  her.  If  he  succeeds  in  capturing  the  bride  she  becomes  his 
wife,  otherwise  he  is  compelled  to  renounce  her  for  ever.  If  there- 
fore a  girl  dislikes  her  suitor,  she  can  easily  escape  from  him 
and  hide  in  the  forest  until  the  time  allowed  for  his  pursuit  has 
expired." 

Darwin  remarks,  in  trying  to  prove  the  existence  of  Sexual 
Selection  among  the  lower  races,  that  "  in  utterly  barbarous  tribes 
the  women  have  more  power  in  choosing,  rejecting,  and  tempting 
their  lovers,  or  of  afterwards  changing  their  husbands,  than  might 
have  been  expected;"  and  he  cites  the  following  cases,  among 


GO  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

others  :  "  Amongst  the  Abipones,  a  man  on  choosing  a  wife,  bar- 
gains with  the  parents  about  the  price.  But  'it  frequently 
happens  that  the  girl  rescinds  what  has  been  agreed  upon  between 
the  parents  and  the  bridegroom,  obstinately  rejecting  the  very 
mention  of  marriage.'  She  often  runs  away,  hides  herself,  and 
thus  eludes  the  bridegroom.  Captain  Musters,  who  lived  with  the 
Patagonians,  says  that  their  marriages  are  always  settled  by  incli- 
uation ;  '  if  the  parents  make  a  match  contrary  to  the  daughter's 
will,  she  refuses,  and  is  never  compelled  to  comply/  In  Tierra  del 
Fuego  a  young  man  first  obtains  the  consent  of  the  parents  by  do- 
ing them  some  service,  and  then  he  attempts  to  carry  off  the  girl ; 
4  but  if  she  is  unwilling,  she  hides  herself  in  the  woods  until  her 
admirer  is  heartily  tired  of  looking  for  her,  and  gives  up  the 
pursuit ;  but  this  seldom  happens/  " 

PERSONAL  BEAUTY  AND   SEXUAL   SELECTION 

Evidence  proving  that  primitive  women  are  influenced  in  their 
choice  of  a  mate  by  aesthetic  considerations  appears  to  be  almost 
as  scant  as  among  animals.  Darwin,  however,  tries  to  prove  that 
men  owe  their  beards  to  sexual  or  female  selection;  and  the 
following  more  general  instances  may  be  cited  for  what  they  are 
worth  :  Azara  "  describes  how  carefully  a  Guana  woman  bargains 
for  all  sorts  of  privileges  before  accepting  some  one  or  more 
husbands ;  and  the  men  in  consequence  take  unusual  care  of  their 
personal  appearance."  Among  the  Kaffirs  "  very  ugly,  though  rich 
men,  have  been  known  to  fail  in  getting  wives.  The  girls,  before 
consenting  to  be  betrothed,  compel  the  men  to  show  themselves 
off  first  in  front  and  then  behind,  and  '  exhibit  their  paces.' " 

In  general,  however,  it  seems  that  the  women  choose,  not  the 
handsomest  men,  but  those  whose  boldness,  pugnacity,  and  virility 
promise  them  the  surest  protection  against  enemies,  and  general 
domestic  delights.  Thus,  we  read  that  "  before  he  is  allowed  to 
marry,  a  young  Dyack  must  prove  his  bravery  by  bringing  back 
the  head  of  an  enemy ; "  and  that  when  the  Apaches  warriors  re- 
turn unsuccessful,  "  the  women  turn  away  from  them  with  assured 
indifference  and  contempt.  They  are  upbraided  as  cowards,  or  for 
want  of  skill  and  tact,  and  are  told  that  such  men  should  not  have 
wives." 

It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that  (as  we  have  seen  in  the 
case  of  plants  and  animals)  the  greatest  amount  of  health,  vigour, 
and  courage  generally  coincide  with  the  greatest  physical  beauty  \ 
hence  the  continued  preference  of  the  most  energetic  and  lusty  men 


LOVE  AMONG  SAVAGES  61 

by  the  superior  women  who  have  a  choice,  has  naturally  tended  to 
evolve  a  superior  type  of  manly  beauty. 

In  the  case  of  men  it  seems  much  more  probable  that  they 
frequently  select  their  wives  in  accordance  with  an  aesthetic  stan- 
dard. The  chiefs  of  almost  every  tribe  throughout  the  world  have 
more  than  one  wife ;  and  Mr.  Mantell  informed  Darwin  that  until 
recently  almost  every  girl  in  New  Zealand  who  was  pretty,  or 
promised  to  be  pretty,  was  tapu  to  some  chief;  while  among  the 
Kaffirs,  according  to  Mr.  C.  Hamilton,  "  the  chiefs  generally  have 
the  pick  of  the  women  for  many  miles  round,  and  are  most 
persevering  in  establishing  or  confirming  their  privilege."  In 
the  lower  tribes,  where  "communal  marriage"  and  marriage 
by  Capture  alone  prevail,  aesthetic  choice  is  of  course  out  of  the 
question,  and  cannot  make  its  appearance  till  we  come  to  less 
pugnacious  tribes,  such  as  the  Dyacks,  whose  children  "  have  the 
freedom  implied  by  regular  courtship,"  or  the  Samoans,  whose  child- 
ren "  have  the  degree  of  independence  implied  by  elopements  when 
they  cannot  obtain  parental  assent  to  their  marriage  "  (Spencer). 

In  general,  however,  among  the  lower  races,  Sexual  or  aesthetic 
Selection  leads  to  sorry  results,  owing  to  the  bad  taste  of  the 
selectors.  The  standard  of  primitive  taste  is  not  harmonious  pro- 
portion and  capacity  for  expression,  but  Exaggeration.  The  negro 
woman  has  naturally  thicker  lips,  more  prominent  cheek-bones, 
and  a  flatter  nose  than  a  white  woman ;  and  in  selecting  a  mate, 
preference  is  commonly  given  to  the  one  whose  lips  are  thickest, 
nose  most  flattened,  and  cheek-bones  most  prominent :  thus  pro- 
ducing gradually  that  monster  of  ugliness — the  average  negro 
woman.  What  right  we  have  to  set  ourselves  up  as  judges,  and 
claim  that  our  taste  is  superior  to  the  negro's,  is  a  question  which 
will  be  discussed  in  a  subsequent  section  of  this  treatise. 

One  other  point,  however,  may  be  referred  to  here,  namely, 
that  altnough  the  assthetic  overtone  of  Love — the  Admiration  of 
Personal  Beauty — may  enter  into  a  savage's  amorous  feelings,  it  is 
only  the  sensuous  aspect  of  it  that  affects  him,  the  intellectual 
and  moral  sides  being  unknown  to  him.  His  admiration  is  purely 
physical.  He  marries  his  chosen  bride  when  she  is  a  mere  child, 
and  before  the  slightest  spark  of  mental  charm  can  illumine  her 
features  and  impart  to  them  a  superior  beauty  ;  and  subsequently, 
when  experience  has  somewhat  sharpened  her  intellectual  powers, 
hard  labour  has  already  destroyed  all  traces  of  her  physical  beauty  • 
so  that  the  combination  of  physical  and  mental  charms  which 
alone  can  inspire  the  highest  form  of  Love  is  never  to  be  found  in 
primitive  woman. 


62  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 


JEALOUSY  AND   POLYGAMY 

The  moral  mission  of  Jealousy,  as  stated  on  a  preceding  page, 
is,  by  means  of  watchfulness  and  the  inspiring  of  fear,  to  ensure 
fidelity  and  chastity.  Darwin  says  that  from  the  strength  of  the 
feeling  of  jealousy  all  through  the  animal  kingdom,  as  well  as 
from  the  analogy  of  the  lower  animals,  especially  those  which 
come  nearest  to  man,  he  "cannot  believe  that  absolutely  pro- 
miscuous intercourse  prevailed  in  times  past,  shortly  before  man 
attained  to  his  present  rank  in  the  zoological  scale."  This  may  be 
true,  yet  it  is  astonishing  to  find  how  many  of  the  lower  tribes 
are  utterly  unconcerned  regarding  the  morals  both  of  married  and 
unmarried  women.  A  vast  number  of  cases  illustrating  this 
absence  of  jealousy  are  collected  in  Waitz's  Anthropology,  Spencer's 
Sociology,  the  works  of  Lubbock,  and  especially  in  Floss's  Das 
Weib,  i.  205-214.  In  some  cases  girls  are  allowed  to  do  as  they 
please  until  after  marriage,  when  they  are  jealously  guarded ;  in 
other  cases  the  reverse  is  true.  In  some  parts  of  Africa  a  breach 
of  faith  on  the  wife's  part  is  regarded  as  an  attack  not  on  the. 
husband's  honour  but  on  his  property;  hence  a  pecuniary  com- 
pensation is  all  that  is  required.  Lubbock  enumerates  a  large 
number  of  races  among  whom  the  lending  of  a  wife  or  daughter  is 
a  common  and  obligatory  form  of  hospitality.  And  the  Chibchas 
of  South  America  went  so  far  in  their  indifference  to  virginity 
that  they  considered  a  virgin  bride  to  be  unfortunate,  "  as  she  had 
not  inspired  affection  in  men." 

Jealousy  for  the  possession  of  a  woman,  however,  was  much 
sooner  developed  than  jealous  regard  for  her  conduct.  The  state- 
ment of  Sir  John  Lubbock  about  the  men  of  an  Indian  tribe,  that 
they  "  fight  for  the  possession  of  the  women,  just  like  stags,"  and 
similar  statements  regarding  other  savages,  imply  that,  just  like 
stags,  these  men  feel  the  pangs  of  primitive  Jealousy. 

Among  polygamous  nations  the  women,  too,  often  fight  for  the 
men,  whose  favourites  in  their  absence  are  apt  to  suffer  much  at 
the  hands  of  jealous  rivals.  It  is  among  the  polygamous  semi- 
civilised  nations  in  general  that  Jealousy  asserts  itself  in  the  most 
shrill  and  dissonant  manner.  It  is  not  that  bitter-sweet  romantic 
Jealousy  which  by  its  constant  fluctuations  between  hope  and 
doubt  fans  a  modern  lover's  passion  into  brighter  flames ;  it  is  a 
more  vicious  kind  of  conjugal  Jealousy  which  destroys  domestic 
peace  and  plots  the  ruin  of  rivals.  In  Madagascar,  Mr.  Spencer 
tells  us,  "  the  name  for  Polygyny — *  fampovafesana ' — signifies 


LOVE  AMONG  SAVAGES  68 

c  the  means  of  causing  enmity ' ;  and  that  kindred  names  are 
commonly  applicable  to  it  we  are  shown  by  their  use  among  the 
Hebrews  :  in  the  Mishna  a  man's  several  wives  are  called  *  tz&rot,' 
that  is,  troubles,  adversaries,  or  rivals."  In  modern  Persia,  where 
polygamy  prevails,  the  same  state  of  affairs  is  encountered.  Says 
Ploss  :  ''It  there  are  several  women  in  the  house,  each  one  in- 
habits a  separate  division ;  in  the  houses  of  the  wealthy  each 
wife,  moreover,  has  her  own  servants.  Constantly  apprehending 
evil  intentions,  no  woman  touches  the  dishes  of  a  rival." 

It  is  among  the  polygamous  nations  of  the  East,  too,  that 
history  records  such  a  profusion  of  bloody  wars  of  succession 
waged  by  half-brothers;  for  how  could  fraternal  or  any  other 
kind  of  domestic  affection  flourish  in  families  where  the  mothers 
are  constantly  goaded  by  Jealousy  into  deadly  hatred  of  one 
another  ? 

MONOPOLY  AND   MONOGAMY 

The  United  States  being  a  "  free  country,"  its  government 
has  sometimes  been  blamed  by  "  freethinkers  "  for  attempting  to 
repress  Mormon  Polygamy.  But  a  free  country  is  not  one  in 
which  social  experiments  injurious  to  public  welfare  are  to  be 
necessarily  allowed.  Headers  of  history  and  anthropology  know 
that  polygamy  is  an  experiment  which  has  been  tried  so  often 
with  disastrous  social  results,  that  it  may  be  looked  upon  safely 
as  criminal  and  treated  accordingly.  Even  the  forcible  argument 
of  that  spiteful  old  pessimist,  Schopenhauer,  that  polygamy  should 
be  introduced  because  it  would  rid  the  world  of  old  maids,  does 
not  save  the  institution ;  since  it  is  well — for  the  prospects  of 
Beauty,  at  any  rate — that  some  women  should  be  "  eliminated  " 
in  the  form  of  old  maids. 

Among  the  causes  which  tended  to  make  polygamy  the  com- 
monest form  of  marriage  among  savages,  four  may  be  briefly 
enumerated :  (1)  The  constant  wars  among  the  tribes  decimated 
the  men,  leaving  a  larger  proportion  of  women  than  men,  although 
this  was  to  some  extent  neutralised  by  the  habit  of  female  in- 
fanticide, which  the  women  indulged  in  to  make  themselves  more 
cherished  through  scarcity  and,  possibly,  to  preserve  their  beauty ; 
(2)  The  women  being  commonly  secured  as  booty  in  war,  it  was 
naturally  looked  on  as  an  honour  and  a  sign  of  valour  to  have 
more  than  one  wife ;  (3)  Women  being  regarded  and  treated  as 
slaves,  the  more  a  man  had  of  them  the  more  they  could,  by  their 
combined  labour,  increase  his  wealth  and  influence  in  the  tribe ; 
(4)  The  rapid  decay  of  the  youthful  beauty  of  primitive  woman, 


64  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

naturally  inclined  her  husband,  whose  affection  was  solely  based 
oil  those  physical  charms,  to  add  a  second  or  third,  younger  woman 
to  his  harem. 

As  woman's  position  improved  with  advancing  civilisation, 
these  influences  favouring  polygamy  were  gradually  weakened; 
and  as  in  treating  of  Love  among  Animals,  we  found  the  most 
remarkable  instances  of  affection — conjugal  and  romantic — among 
birds,  who  are  mostly  monogamous  ;  so,  among  the  lower  races  of 
man,  monogamy  is  commonly  a  sign  of  superior  culture  and  higher 
development  of  the  affections.  And  this  might  have  been  foreseen 
a  priori,  inasmuch  as  monogomy  is  the  only  marital  relation  com- 
patible with  that  Monopoly  of  affection  which  is  one  of  the  con- 
ditions of  Romantic  Love.  How  could  a  man  feel  an  exclusive 
amorous  interest  in  his  bride,  knowing  that  in  a  few  months  or 
years  another  would  come  to  claim  half  his  interest  1  or  how 
could  the  bride  concentrate  all  her  Love  on  a  man  of  whom  she 
knew  that  he  could  give  her  only  half  or  a  smaller  fraction  of  his 
affection  ? 

A  similar  view  is  taken  by  Mr.  Spencer.  Monogamic  unions, 
he  says,  "  tend  in  no  small  degree  indirectly  to  raise  the  quality  of 
adult  life,  by  giving  a  permanent  and  deep  source  of  aesthetic 
interest.  On  recalling  the  many  and  keen  pleasures  derived  from 
music,  poetry,  fiction,  the  drama,  etc.  ;  and  on  remembering  that 
their  predominant  theme  is  the  passion  of  love,  we  shall  see  that 
to  monogamy,  which  has  developed  this  passion,  we  owe  a  large 
part  of  the  gratifications  which  fill  our  leisure  hours." 

PEIMITIVE   COYNESS 

Among  the  Samoiedes,  says  Klemm,  "  a  man  purchases  a  wife 
for  a  number  of  reindeer,  varying  from  five  to  twenty  ;  the  bride, 
as  is  the  case  also  in  Greenland,  struggles  violently  against  leaving 
the  paternal  house,  and  commonly  she  has  to  be  caught  forcibly 
and  bound  on  the  bridegroom's  sledge."  In  some  of  the  Bedouin 
tribes  the  destined  bride  runs  from  tent  to  tent  to  escape  being 
brought  to  the  bridegroom.  When  an  Esquimaux  girl  is  asked  in 
marriage,  says  Kranz  (quoted  by  Mr.  Spencer),  she  "  directly  falls 
into  the  greatest  apparent  consternation  and  runs  out  of  doors, 
tearing  her  bunch  of  hair ;  for  single  women  always  affect  the 
utmost  bashfulness  and  aversion  to  any  proposal  of  marriage,  lest 
they  should  lose  their  reputation  for  modesty."  So  among  the 
Bushmen  a  lover's  attentions  "  are  received  with  an  affectation  of 
great  alarm  and  disinclination  on  her  part " ;  while  an  Arab  bride 


LOVE  AMONG  SAVAGES  65 

"  defends  herself  with  stones,  and  often  inflicts  wounds  on  the 
young  men,  even  though  she  does  not  dislike  the  lover ;  for 
according  to  custom,  the  more  she  struggles,  bites,  kicks,  cries, 
and  strikes,  the  more  she  is  applauded  ever  after  by  her  own 
companions." 

Obviously  these  glacier,  forest,  and  desert  belles  have  a  some- 
what cruder  way  than  our  city  belles  of  hiding  their  feelings. 

Mr.  Spencer  refers  to  the  Coyness  of  these  maidens  as  one 
motive  or  cause  of  wife-capture,  but  he  does  not  inquire  into  the 
origin  of  Coyness  itself,  which  is  a  much  more  interesting  point  in 
the  psychology  of  Love.  The  fear  "  lest  they  should  lose  their 
reputation  for  modesty,"  mentioned  above,  is  the  most  obvious 
cause  of  this  exaggerated  resistance,  as  it  is  of  the  excessive 
prudishness  often  encountered  in  some  European  civilised  countries 
of  to-day.  Again,  the  sight  of  the  harsh  treatment  to  which  her 
married  sisters  or  friends  are  subjected,  would  make  the  primitive 
bride  naturally  averse  to  exchange  her  maiden  freedom  for  conjugal 
slavery. 

It  seems,  however,  that  in  most  cases,  the  Coyness  is  less  real 
than  simulated;  and  for  this  form  of  Coyness — reversing  Mr. 
Spencer's  reasoning — we  may  say  that  Exogamy,  or  Capture,  is 
responsible.  For  since  Capture  implies  courage  and  valour  on  the 
part  of  the  husband,  it  may  have  been  to  secure  the  "  prestige  of 
a  foreign  marriage  " — as  fashionable  novelists  would  say — that  the 
form  of  Capture  v.'as  imitated  in  cases  where  there  was  no  opposi- 
tion, either  on  the  part  of  the  girl  or  her  parents. 

Another  explanation  of  sham  Coyness  is  afforded  by  the  follow- 
ing case :  Among  the  inhabitants  of  the  Volga  region,  in  Russia, 
the  bride  is  occasionally  captured  and  carried  off,  though  here  too 
there  is  no  opposition  on  her  part  or  from  her  parents.  The  cause 
of  this  procedure  is  the  desire  to  avoid  the  expenses  of  the  marriage 
ceremony,  which  in  that  region  are  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
means  of  the  lower  classes. 

Finally  it  may  be  suggested  that  Coyness,  so  far  as  it  really 
exists  in  the  primitive  maiden,  owes  its  origin  to  the  instinctive 
perception  that  the  men  value  them  more  if  they  do  not  throw 
the  .aselves  into  their  arms  on  the  first  impulse.  And  more  than 
anything  else,  this  attitude  of  reserve  feeds  the  flames  of  Romantic 
LOT  e  by  transferring  its  delights  and  pangs  to  the  imagination. 

Yet,  after  all,  manifestations  of  Coyness  must  be  the  exception 
and  not  the  rule  in  the  lower  races,  inasmuch  as  in  the  vast 
majority  of  cases,  where  no  choice  is  allowed  the  bride,  there  is 
little  or  no  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  such  a  trait. 

F 


66 


KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 


Of  GALLANTRY  I  have  not  succeeded  in  discovering  any  traces 
in  the  records  of  savage  life,  except  possibly  in  the  case  of  the 
natives  of  Kamtchatka,  where  the  wooer  has  to  go  into  service  for 
his  bride,  and  during  this  time  endeavours  constantly  to  lighten 
her  labours  and  make  himself  agreeable  to  her.  So  far  as  Gallantry 
occurs,  it  is  more  likely  to  be  a  feminine  trait — as  among  one  of 
the  North  American  Indian  tribes,  where  the  maiden  cooks  her 
suitor's  game,  and  sends  him  back  the  best  morsels  with  presents ; 
or  as  with  another  tribe,  the  Osages,  where  the  maidens  pay  court 
to  the  warriors  by  offering  them  ears  of  corn. 

As  for  the  remaining  characters  of  Romantic  Love,  which 
require  a  vivid  imagination  and  persistent  emotions  for  their  reali- 
sation, it  would  be  useless  to  look  for  them  in  Savagedom — except 
perhaps  in  those  infinitesimal  proportions  in  which  various  chemical 
substances  are  found  by  analysts  in  mineral  waters.  The  following 
may  be  offered  as  an  approximate  list  of  the  ingredients  in  the 
Love  of  savage  and  semi- civilised  peoples  : — 


Selfishness          . 

Inconstancy       . 

Jealousy  . 

Co)'ness 

Individual  Preference 

Personal  Beauty 

Monopoly 

Pride  of  Possession 

Sympathy 

Gallantry 

Self-Sacrifice      . 

Ecstatic  Adoration 

Mixed  Emotions 


0  to 


257684 

20-3701 

207904 

10-5523 

5-0073 

57002 

7-3024 

4-5082 

O'OOOO 

0-0006 

Traces 


CAN   AMERICAN   NEGROES   LOVE? 

It  is  a  very  interesting  question  how  far  the  negroes  trans- 
planted to  America,  who  have  adopted  so  many  of  the  habits  and 
ways  of  thinking  of  their  white  neighbours,  are  capable  of  forming 
a  true  romantic  attachment,  characterised  by  the  various  traits 
described  in  this  work.  I  have  not  been  able  to  find  any  con- 
clusive evidence  on  this  head;  and  should  any  readers  of  this  book 
positively  know  any  cases,  I  should  be  greatly  obliged  if  they 
would  forward  a  detailed  account  of  them  to  me,  in  care  of  the 
publisher. 

As  regards  a  negro's  capacity  for  falling  in  Love  with  a  white 
woman,  the  following  interesting  communication  l  appeared  in  the 
1  Signed  Sue  Harry  Clagett. 


HISTORY  OF  LOVE-LOVE  IN  EGYPT  67 

New  York  Nation,  12th  February  1885:  "In  corroboration  of 
'Bill  ArpV  view,  referred  to  in  No.  1020  of  the  Nation,  that 
negroes,  as  a  race,  do  not  desire  to  '  mix '  with  the  white  race,  I 
may  cite  a  remark  recently  made  by  a  negro  carpenter  to  a  friend 
of  mine.  The  latter  said  to  him,  as  a  village  belle  passed  them 
on  the  street,  *  Charles,  don't  you  think  that's  a  very  handsome 
young  lady  ? '  *  I  reckon  so,'  he  answered  doubtfully,  and  imme- 
diately added,  *  Fact  is,  boss,  us  coloured  folks  don't  think  white 
ladies  handsome  ;  we  like  'em  coloured  the  best.' 

"  Had  it  been  otherwise  there  would,  doubtless,  have  been 
innumerable  instances,  in  the  North  as  well  as  at  the  South,  of 
love-longings  on  the  part  of  negro  men  toward  girls  of  the  dominant 
race.  Yet  during  all  the  years  I  have  spent  in  the  Southern 
States,  I  never  knew  or  heard  of  any  instances  of  this  kind,  and 
their  exceptional  character  in  the  North  must  be  known  to  all 
your  readers.  The  hopelessness  of  such  attachments  would,  of 
course,  diminish  their  number;  but  fancy  is  always  free,  and 
1  hopeless  attachments '  among  members  of  the  same  race  are  as 
common  now  as  when  Petrarch  sighed  for  Laura,  and  Tasso  wrote 
*  The  throne  of  Cupid  has  an  easy  stair,'  himself  having  climbed  it 
uninspired  by  hope.  The  existence  of  many  persons  of  mixed 
blood  throughout  the  country  affords  no  proof  that  the  two  races 
feel  toward  each  other  the  attraction  of  love ;  for  the  fathers,  in 
these  cases,  are  almost  invariably  white,  and  the  offspring  cannot 
be  called  '  love-children,'  but  the  fruit  of  mere  passion  linked  with 
opportunity. 

HISTORY  OF  LOVE 

It  would  be  a  profitless  task  to  hunt  for  the  first  traces  of  the 
various  elements  of  Love  in  the  records  of  all  the  nations  of 
antiquity;  for  we  meet  almost  everywhere  with  the  same  old  story 
of  Romantic  Love  impeded  in  its  growth  or  its  very  existence  by 
the  degraded  position  of  women,  and  by  the  absence  of  oppor- 
tunities for  courtship,  and  for  free  matrimonial  choice.  A  few 
remarks,  however,  must  be  made  concerning  Love  among  the 
ancient  Egyptians,  Hebrews,  Greeks,  Romans,  and  our  Aryan 
kinsfolk  in  India,  before  passing  on  to  Mediaeval  and  Modern 
Love. 

LOVE  IN  EGYPT 

Dr.  Georg  Ebers,  the  Leipzig  professor,  and  author  of  the 
popular  series  of  historic  Egyptian  novels,  remarks  that  "  if  it  is 


68  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

true  that  a  nation's  degree  of  culture  can  be  estimated  by  the  more 
or  less  favourable  position  accorded  its  women,  then  Egyptian 
culture  ranks  above  that  of  all  other  ancient  peoples." 

The  women  of  ancient  Egypt  were  not  kept  in  seclusion  like 
those  of  Greece.  They  did  their  own  marketing,  and  had  other 
domestic  and  public  liberties  and  privileges  which  astonished  the 
Greek  historian  Herodotus,  who  also  mentions  that  although 
polygamy  was  tolerated  among  them,  monogamy  was  the  rule. 
Inasmuch  as  the  Egyptians  had  an  advanced  culture,  invented 
many  arts,  promoted  the  sciences,  and  were  industrial  rather  than 
militant  in  their  occupations,  it  is  possible  that  several  of  the  more 
refined  elements  of  Romantic  Love  may  have  existed  among  them ; 
for  just  as  we  have  seen  that  some  animals  have  higher  notions  of 
love,  conjugal  and  romantic,  than  some  savages,  although  the 
latter  represent  a  later  stage  of  evolution,  so  it  seems  probable 
that  among  the  nations  of  antiquity  Love  did  not  progress  steadily, 
year  by  year ;  but  that  some  nations  had  more  and  some  less  of 
it ;  while  the  acquisitions  of  one  period  may  have  been  lost  in  evil 
and  corrupt  times  following,  as  was  certainly  the  case  in  India. 

Since  we  have  no  such  extensive  literature  of  Egypt  as  we  have 
of  the  Greeks,  Romans,  and  Hebrews,  it  is  not  easy  to  arrive  at 
definite  conclusions.  But  the  Egyptian  custom  of  forming  **  trial 
marriages  "  for  one  year,  and  the  ease  with  which  a  husband  could 
divorce  and  expel  his  wife  by  simply  pronouncing  three  words  in 
her  presence  do  not  harmonise  with  our  modern  notions  of  Love. 
How  scornfully  a  modern  Romeo  would  reject  the  very  notion  of 
such  a  trial-marriage  !  for  does  he  not  feel  absolutely  certain  that 
his  Love  is  eternal  and  unalterable  ? 

The  institution  of  trial-marriages  seems  to  point  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  Egyptians,  like  the  Greeks,  looked  upon  marriage  primarily 
as  a  means  of  augmenting  the  family  and  the  state,  and  not  as  a 
union  of  loving  souls — children  or  no  children — which  is  the 
modern  ideal. 

Professor  Ebers  of  course  has  a  right  to  make' use  of  a  poetic 
license  in  painting  the  Love  affairs  of  his  Egyptian  heroes  and 
heroines  in  modern  colours,  as  Shakspere  does  in  Antony  and 
Cleopatra.  At  the  same  time  it  would  give  an  added  flavour  to 
historic  romances  if  their  pictures  of  domestic  and  public  life  were 
characterised  by  emotional  realism  as  well  as  by  general  antiquarian 
accuracy.  The  elaborate  analysis  of  Love,  for  the  first  time 
attempted  in  the  present  monograph,  should  facilitate  this  task 
for  novelists. 


ANCIENT  HEBREW  LOVE  69 


ANCIENT  HEBREW  LOVE 

It  is  almost  startling  to  find,  on  consulting  a  Concordance  of 
the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  that  in  the  whole  of  the  Bible  there 
is  not  a  single  reference  to  Romantic  Love.  Had  this  sentiment 
existed  among  the  ancient  Hebrews  as  it  does  among  their 
descendants  to-day,  it  is  obvious  that  it  could  not  possibly  have 
been  ignored  in  the  Book  of  Books,  which  so  eloquently  and 
poetically  discourses  of  everything  else  that  is  of  vital  interest  to 
man.  Conjugal  Love  (which  apparently  antedates  Romantic  Love 
in  every  nation)  is  indeed  repeatedly  referred  to  and  enjoined,  as 
well  as  the  other  family  affections;  but  in  the  remaining  cases  the 
word  Love  is  always  used  in  the  sense  of  religious  veneration,  or 
of  regard  for  a  neighbour  or  an  enemy. 

This  absence  of  any  reference  to  Romantic  Love  is  all  the  more 
surprising  in  view  of  the  fact  that  among  the  ancient  Hebrews 
woman  was  held  more  in  honour  than  with  any  other  Oriental 
nation,  ancient  or  modern.  Thus  we  are  told  in  M'Clintock  ana 
Strong's  Cyclopaedia  of  Biblical  etc.  Literature,  that  "the  seclu- 
sion of  the  harem  and  the  habits  consequent  upon  it  were  utterly 
unknown  in  early  times,  and  the  condition  of  the  Oriental  woman, 
as  pictured  to  us  in  the  Bible,  contrasts  most  -favourably  with  that 
of  her  modern  representative.  There  is  abundant  evidence  that 
women,  whether  married  or  unmarried,  went  about  with  their  faces 
unveiled.  An  unmarried  woman  might  meet  and  converse  with 
men,  even  strangers,  in  a  public  place ;  she  might  be  found  alone 
in  the  country  without  any  reflection  on  her  character;  or  she 
might  appear  in  a  court  of  justice."  The  wife  "  entertained  guests 
at  her  own  desire  in  the  absence  of  her  husband,  and  sometimes 
even  in  defiance  of  his  wishes." 

Since,  therefore,  the  Hebrew  woman  was  not  "  the  husband's 
slave  but  his  companion,"  how  are  we  to  account  for  the  absence 
of  Love  ? 

Some  light  is  thrown  on  the  matter  by  the  prevalence  of  poly- 
gamy, which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  inimical  to  the  growth  of  Love. 
Polygamy,  though  not  universal,  was  sanctioned  by  the  Mosaic 
law,  except  in  the  case  of  priests.  "  The  secondary  wife  was 
regarded  by  the  Hebrews  as  a  wife,  and  her  rights  were  secured  by 
law."  In  the  cases  of  Abraham  and  Jacob,  polygamy  was  resorted 
to  at  the  request  of  their  own  wives,  "  under  the  idea  that  child- 
ren born  to  a  slave  were  in  the  eye  of  the  law  the  children  of  the 
mistress."  Now  if  a  woman  advises  her  own  husband  to  tako 


70  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

another  wife,  there  must  be  a  total  absence  of  Jealousy  and  Mono- 
poly— the  two  elements  of  Romantic  Love  which  pass  into  conjugal 
affection  without  diminution  of  force. 

Again,  although  Hebrew  women  are  said  to  have  had  con- 
siderable liberty  of  going  about  alone  in  town  and  country,  this 
probably  refers  in  most  cases  to  the  privilege  of  tending  sheep  and 
of  fetching  water  at  the  well.  "  From  all  education  in  general/' 
says  Ploss,  "  as  well  as  from  social  intercourse  with  men,  woman 
was  excluded  ;  her  destination  being  simply  to  increase  the  number 
of  children,  and  take  care  of  household  matters.  She  lived  a  quiet 
life,  merely  for  her  husband,  who,  indeed,  treated  her  with  respect 
and  consideration,  but  without  feeling  any  special  tenderness 
toward  her." 

It  is  the  line  which  I  have  italicised  in  the  above  quotation 
that  suggests  the  principal  reason  of  the  non-existence  of  Love  in 
Biblical  times :  There  were  no  meetings  of  the  young,  no  oppor- 
tunities for  Courtship,  the  indispensable  condition  of  Love,  which 
requires  time  and  opportunity  for  its  growth.  And  not  only  were 
there  no  regular  opportunities  for  Courtship,  but  if  they  offered 
themselves  casually,  the  young  folks  could  not  derive  much  benefit, 
from  them ;  for  not  only  the  daughter's  choice,  but  even  the  son's 
was  neutralised  by  the  parental  command.  "Fathers  from  the 
beginning  considered  it  both  their  duty  and  prerogative  to  find  or 
select  wives  for  their  sons  (Gen.  xxiv.  3 ;  xxxviii.  6).  In  the 
absence  of  the  father,  the  selection  devolved  upon  the  mother 
(Gen.  xxi.  21).  Even  in  cases  where  the  wishes  of  the  son  were 
consulted,  the  proposals  were  made  by  the  father  (Gen.  xxxiv.  4, 
8) ;  and  the  violation  of  this  parental  prerogative  on  the  part  of 
the  son  was  'a  grief  of  mind'  to  the  father  (Gen.  xxvi.  35).  The 
proposals  were  generally  made  by  the  parents  of  the  young  man, 
except  when  there  was  a  difference  of  rank,  in  which  case  the 
negotiations  proceeded  from  the  father  of  the  maiden  (Exod.  ii. 
21),  and  when  accepted  by  the  parents  on  both  sides,  sometimes 
*lso  consulting  the  opinion  of  the  adult  brothers  of  the  maiden 
(Gen.  xxiv.  51  ;  xxxiv.  11),  the  matter  was  considered  as  settled, 
without  requiring  the  consent  of  the  bride"  (M'Clintock  and 
Strong). 

But  how  about  the  Song  of  Solomon — the  Song  of  Songs  1  Is 
not  that  a  song  of  Love,  and  an  exception  to  our  general  state- 
ment? It  appears  so  at  first  sight;  and  the  German  writer 
Herder,  in  his  detailed  and  glowing  analysis  of  it,  declares  that  it 
depicts  love  "  from  its  first  origin,  from  its  tenderest  bud,  through 
all  stages  and  conditions  of  its  growth,  its  flowering,  its  maturing, 


ANCIENT  HEBREW  LOVE  71 

to  the  ripe  fruit  and  new  offshoot."  Herder,  however,  is  a  very 
unsafe  and  shallow  guide  in  this  matter.  An  attempt  has  lately 
been  made  to  rehabilitate  him  in  Germany,  where  his  fame  has 
become  almost  extinct;  but  in  vain,  for  his  pompous,  stilted 
rhetoric  and  imagery  cannot  conceal  from  modern  readers  his  lack 
of  ideas  and  limited  knowledge  of  facts.  He  asserts  that,  as  there 
is  only  one  Goodness,  one  Truth,  so  there  is  but  one  Love  (or 
Affection).  If  you  do  not  love  your  wife,  he  says,  you  will  not 
love  your  friend,  parents,  or  child.  A  writer  whose  notions  of  the 
psychology  of  love  are  so  excessively  crude  cannot  be  considered  a 
trustworthy  judge  in  the  matter  in  question.  So  far  as  love  is 
referred  to  in  the  Song  of  Solomon,  it  is  probable  that  conjugal  ^ 
affection  is  meant. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  of  the  famous  German,  English,  and 
French  theologians  who  have  written  commentaries  on  the  Song  of 
Songs,  no  two  seem  to  agree  in  their  interpretation  of  its  plot  and 
significance.  It  is  now  generally  agreed,  too,  that  the  Song  was 
not  written  by  Solomon,  but  some  time  after  him.  It  seems, 
indeed,  incredible  that  a  monarch  who  had  a  thousand  wives,  and 
whose  affections  must  have  been  torn  into  a  thousand  shreds,  and 
cannot  have  been  very  lasting,  should  have  written  these  marvellous 
lines  :  "  For  love  is  strong  as  death  ;  jealousy  is  cruel  as  the  grave  : 
the  coals  thereof  are  coals  of  fire,  which  hath  a  most  vehement 
flaine.  Many  waters  cannot  quench  love,  neither  can  the  floods 
drown  it :  if  a  man  should  give  all  the  substance  of  his  house  for 
love,  it  would  utterly  be  contemned." 

This  passage  has  a  remarkably  modern  and  romantic  sound — so 
modern  and  romantic  that  it  would  not  seem  out  of  place  in  Shak- 
spere.  But  it  needs  no  knowledge  of  Hebrew  to  see  that  the 
responsibility  for  this  modern  sound  rests  with  the  English  trans- 
lators. Luther's  more  literal  version  appears  much  less  modern. 
Indeed,  throughout  the  Song  of  Solomon  the  English  translators 
have  idealised  the  language  of  passion,  in  harmony  with  modern 
notions  on  the  subject;  so  that  it  is  only  on  reading  Luther's 
version  that  one  begins  to  understand  why  the  Talmudists  did  not 
allow  the  Jews  to  read  this  book  before  their  thirtieth  year. 

Perhaps  the  most  ingenious  and  consistent  of  the  numerous 
interpretations  of  the  Song  of  Solomon  is  that  given  by  M.  Chas. 
Bruston  in  the  Encydopcedie  des  Sciences  Religieuses  (ii.  610- 
612).  The  repetition  of  the  flatteries  occurring  in  the  poem  he 
explains  by  showing  that  the  second  time  they  refer,  not  to  the 
Sulamite,  but  to  a  princess  of  Lebanon  whom  Solomon  married. 
Hence,  he  insists,  the  repetition  is  not  so  much  a  literary  uemish 


72  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

as  an  indication  "  combien  est  vil  et  me'prisable  1'aniour  sensuel  et 
polygame,  qui  prodigue  indiffdrement  les  m§mes  flatteries  a  des 
femmes  diffe'rentes." 

The  imaginative  and  poetic  terms  in  which  feminine  charms 
are  depicted  in  the  Song  of  Songs  show  that,  nevertheless,  at  least 
the  sensuous  phase  of  the  overtone  of  Personal  Admiration  was 
strongly  developed  among  the  ancient  Hebrews ;  not  strongly 
enough,  however,  to  lead  them,  as  it  led  other  ancient  nations,  to 
embody  their  ideals  of  feminine  and  masculine  beauty  in  marble 
monuments  of  sculpture. 


ANCIENT  ARYAN  LOVE 

As  it  is  among  the  Aryan  or  "  Indo-Germanic  "  races  of  Europe 
and  America  that  Modern  Love  has  produced  its  most  beautiful 
blossoms,  it  is,  even  more  than  in  the  case  of  the  non-Aryan  Jews 
and  Egyptians,  of  interest  to  know  something  concerning  its 
prevalence  among  the  Asiatic  peoples  who  appear  as  the  nearest 
modern  representatives  of  our  remote  Aryan  ancestors. 

In  no  country,  perhaps,  has  the  position  of  woman  differed  so 
greatly  at  various  epochs  as  in  India.  Previous  to  the  introduc- 
tion of  Brahminism,  women  were  held  in  esteem,  enjoyed  diverse 
privileges,  and  were  allowed  free  social  intercourse  with  the  men, 
while  monogamy  was  the  recognised  form  of  marriage.  The 
Brahmins,  however,  introduced  polygamy,  setting  a  good  example 
by  sometimes  marrying  a  whole  family,  "old  and  young,  daughters, 
aunts,  sisters,  and  cousins  "  ;  and  one  case  is  known  of  a  Brahmin 
who  had  120  wives,  according  to  Schweiger  Lerchenfeld.  Family 
feeling  was  subordinated  to  considerations  of  caste,  and  by  a 
sophistical  interpretation  of  ancient  laws  the  Brahmins  introduced 
the  custom  of  Suttee,  or  the  burning  alive  of  widows  on  the 
deceased  husband's  funeral  pyre.  This  habit  is  sometimes 
regarded  as  the  very  apotheosis  of  conjugal  affection,  but  it  was 
simply  what  is  known  in  modern  psychology  as  an  epidemic 
delusion ;  the  poor  women  being  rendered  willing  to  sacrifice 
themselves  by  the  doctrine  that  to  die  in  this  way  was  something 
specially  voluptuous  and  meritorious  ;  while  those  who  refused  to 
be  immolated  were  treated  as  social  outcasts  who  were  not  allowed 
to  marry  again  or  to  adorn  their  persons  in  any  way. 

The  references  to  women  in  the  laws  of  Mann  show  in  what 
low  esteem  they  came  to  be  held  in  India.  A  few  of  the  maxims 
contained  in  this  work  may  be  cited  :  "Of  dishonour  woman  is 


ANCIENT  ARYAN  LOVE  7? 

the  cause  ;  of  enmity  woman  is  the  cause  ;  of  mundane  existence 
woman  is  the  cause  ;  hence  woman  is  to  be  avoided."  "  A  girl, 
a  maiden,  a  wife  shall  never  do  anything  in  accordance  with  her 
own  will,  not  even  in  her  own  house."  "  A  woman  shall  serve 
her  husband  all  life  long,  and  remain  true  to  him  even  after 
death  ;  even  though  he  should  deceive  her,  love  another,  and  be 
devoid  of  good  qualities,  a  good  wife  should  nevertheless  revere 
him  as  if  he  were  a  god  ;  she  must  not  displease  him  ii»  anything, 
neither  in  life  nor  after  his  death."  So  wretched,  indeed,  became 
woman's  lot  that  Indian  mothers,  it  is  said,  "  often  drown  their 
female  children  in  the  sacred  streams  of  India,  to  preserve  them 
from  the  fate  awaiting  them  in  life."  Letourneau  states  that 
"up  to  modern  times  Hindoo  laws  and  manners  have  been 
modelled  after  the  sacred  precepts.  When  Somerat  made  his 
voyage,  it  was  considered  improper  for  a  respectable  woman  to 
know  how  to  read  or  dance.  These  futile  accomplishments  were 
left  to  the  courtesan,  the  Bayadere." 

HINDOO   LOVE   MAXIMS 

That  such  a  state  of  affairs  was  not  favourable  to  Eomantic 
Love  is  obvious.  Nevertheless  there  appears  to  have  been  a 
period — about  1200  or  1500  years  ago — when  some  of  the 
inhabitants  of  India  were  familiar  with  most  of  the  emotions 
which  enter  into  Modern  Love.  This  evidence  is  contained  in  the 
Seven  Hundred  Maxims  of  Hdla,  a  collection  of  poetic  utterances 
dating  back  not  further  than  the  third  century  of  our  era,  and 
comprising  productions  by  various  authors,  including  as  many  as 
sixteen  of  the  female  persuasion.  They  are  written  in  a  sister- 
language  of  Sanscrit,  the  Prakrit ;  and  their  form  indicates  that 
they  were  intended  to  be  sung.  Herr  Albrecht  Weber  remarks  in 
the  Deutsche  Rundschau  with  reference  to  this  collection:  "At 
the  very  beginning  of  our  acquaintance  with  Sanscrit  literature, 
towards  the  end  of  the  last  century,  it  was  noticed,  and  was 
claimed  forthwith  as  an  eloquent  proof  of  antique  relationship, 
that  Indian  poetry,  especially  of  the  amatory  kind,  is  in  character 
remarkably  allied  to  our  own  modern  poetry.  The  sentimental 
qualities  of  modern  verse,  in  one  word,  were  traced  in  Indian 
poetry  in  a  much  higher  degree  than  they  had  been  found  in 
Greek  and  Komau  literature ;  and  this  discovery  awakened  at 
once,  notably  in  Germany,  a  sympathetic  interest  in  a  country 
whose  poets  spoke  a  language  so  well  known  to  our  hearts,  as 
though  they  had  been  born  among  ourselves." 


74  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Some  of  these  maxims  apparently  depict  the  family  life  of  the 
lower  classes ;  others  appear  rather  as  if  they  had  been  intended 
to  be  sung  by  the  Bayaderes,  or  singing  and  dancing  girls  of  the 
Buddhist  temples,  who  emancipated  themselves  from  the  domestic 
and  educational  restrictions  placed  on  other  women,  and  sought  to 
fascinate  men  with  their  wit,  love,  and  aesthetic  accomplishments. 
This  suggestion  is  borne  out  by  the  fact  that  most  of  the  maxims 
are  feminine  utterances,  and  often  of  questionable  moral  character. 
Although,  therefore,  some  of  these  revelations  of  early  Aryan  Love 
have  an  unpleasant  by-flavour,  they  are  yet  extremely  interesting 
as  showing  how  dependent  Romantic  Love  is  on  the  freedom  and 
the  intellectual  and  aesthetic  culture  of  woman. 

We  find  in  the  maxims  of  Hala  evidences  of  that  important 
overtone  of  Love,  Ecstatic  Adoration  or  Poetic  Hyperbole,  which 
we  have  not  encountered  elsewhere,  so  far.  What  could  be  more 
modern  than  this  : — 

"Although  all  my  possessions  were  burnt  in  the  village  fire, 
yet  is  my  heart  delighted,  since  he  took  the  buckets  from  me 
when  they  were  passed  from  hand  to  hand." 

Or  this  : — 

"  0  thou  who  art  skilled  in  cookery,  restrain  thy  anger !  The 
reason  why  the  fire  refuses  to  burn,  and  only  smokes,  is  that  it 
may  the  longer  drink  in  the  breath  of  your  mouth,  fragrant  as  the 
red  potato-blossoms." 

The  following  two  show  how  Personal  Beauty  was  appreciated: — 

"  He  sees  nothing  but  her  face,  and  she  too  is  quite  intoxicated 
by  his  looks.  Both,  satisfied  with  each  other,  act  as  if  in  the 
whole  world  there  were  no  other  women  or  men." 

"  Other  beauties  likewise  have  in  their  faces  beautiful,  wide 
black  eyes,  with  long  lashes, — but  no  one  else  understands  as  she 
does  how  to  use  them." 

How  Love  establishes  his  Monopoly  in  heart  and  mind, 
tolerating  no  other  thought,  is  thus  shown  : — 

"  She  stares  without  a  (visible)  object,  draws  a  deep  sigh, 
laughs  into  empty  space,  mutters  unintelligible  words — forsooth, 
there  must  be  something  on  her  heart." 

Ovid  himself  might  have  written  the  following,  showing 
Love's  inconstancy : — 

"Love  departs  when  lovers  are  separated;  it  departs  when 
they  see  too  much  of  each  other ;  it  departs  in  consequence  of 
malicious  gossip  ;  aye,  it  departs  also  without  these  causes." 

The  nature  of  Coyness  is  evidently  understood,  for  the  lover  is 
thus  admonished ; — 


GREEK  LOVE  75 

"  My  son,  such  is  the  nature  cr  love,  suddenly  to  get  angry,  to 
make  up  again  in  a  moment,  to  dissemble  its  language,  to  tease 
immoderately." 

And  yet  the  poet  deems  it  necessary  to  tell  a  sweetheart 
that— 

"  By  forgiving  him  at  first  sight,  you  foolish  girl,  you  deprived 
yourself  of  many  pleasures, — of  his  prostration  at  your  feet 
[a  trace  of  Gallantry],  of  a  kiss  passionately  stolen." 

The  sadness  of  separation  thus  finds  utterance  : — 

"  As  is  sickness  without  a  physician  ;  as  living  with  relatives 
when  one  is  poor, — as  the  sight  of  an  enemy's  prosperity, — so  is 
it  difficult  to  endure  separation  from  you." 

Thus  we  find  in  Ancient  Aryan  Love  some  of  the  leading 
features  of  modern  romantic  passion. 


GREEK  LOVE 

The  Greeks,  too,  were  Aryans,  and  they  were  the  most  refined 
and  aesthetic  nation  of  antiquity ;  yet  we  look  in  vain  in  their 
literature  for  delineations  of  that  Romantic  Love  which,  according 
to  our  notions,  ought  to  accompany  so  high  a  degree  of  culture. 

FAMILY  AFFECTIONS 

Conjugal  tenderness  and  the  other  family  affections  appear, 
indeed,  to  have  been  known  and  cherished  by  the  Greeks  at  all 
times,  in  the  days  of  Athenian  supremacy,  when  women  were  kept 
in  entire  seclusion,  no  less  than  in  Homeric  times,  when  they  seem 
to  have  enjoyed  more  liberty  of  action.  Plutarch  tells  us  in  his 
Conjugal  Precepts  that  "  With  women  tenderness  of  heart  is  in- 
dicated by  a  pleasing  countenance,  by  sweetness  of  speech,  by  an 
affectionate  grace,  and  by  a  high  degree  of  sensitiveness; "  arid  Mr. 
Lecky  thus  eloquently  sums  up  the  evidence  that  the  Greeks 
appreciated  the  various  forms  of  domestic  affection  : — 

"The  types  of  female  excellence  which  are  contained  in  the 
Greek  poems,  while  they  are  among  the  earliest,  are  also  among 
the  most  perfect  in  the  literature  of  mankind.  The  conjugal  ten- 
derness of  Hector  and  Andromache ;  the  unwearied  fidelity  of 
Penelope,  awaiting  through  the  long  revolving  years  the  return  of 
her  storm-tossed  husband,  who  looked  forward  to  her  as  the  crown 
of  all  his  labours ;  the  heroic  love  of  Alcestis,  voluntarily  dying 
that  her  husband  might  live;  the  filial  piety  of  Antigone;  the 


76  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

majestic  grandeur  of  the  death"  of  Polyxena;  the  more  subdued 
and  saintly  resignation  of  Iphigenia,  excusing  with  her  last  breath 
the  father  who  had  condemned  her;  the  joyous,  modest,  and 
loving  Nausicaa,  whose  figure  shines  like  a  perfect  idyll  among  the 
tragedies  of  the  Odyssey — all  these  are  pictures  of  perennial  beauty, 
which  Rome  and  Christendom,  chivalry  and  modern  civilisation, 
have  neither  eclipsed  nor  transcended.  Virgin  modesty  and 
conjugal  fidelity,  the  graces  as  well  as  the  virtues  of  the  most 
perfect  womanhood,  have  never  been  more  exquisitely  portrayed." 

NO    LOVE-STORIES 

But  Mr.  Lecky,  ignoring,  like  most  writers,  the  enormous 
difference  between  conjugal  and  romantic  love,  forgets  to  notice 
the  absolute  silence  of  Greek  literature  on  the  subject  of  pre- 
matrimonial  infatuation.  Not  one  of  the  Greek  tragedies  is  a 
"love-drama";  romantic  love  does  not  appear  even  in  the  writings 
of  Euripides,  who  has  so  much  to  say  about  women,  and  who 
named  most  of  his  plays  after  his  heroines.  Had  Love  been 
known  to  Sophokles  and  Euripides,  as  it  was  known  to  Shakspere 
and  Goethe,  we  should  no  doubt  have  a  Greek  Romeo  and  Juliet 
and  a  Greek  Faust.  For  although  there  were  certain  limitations 
as  to  the  scope  and  the  dramatis  personal  of  a  Greek  play,  there 
was  nothing  whatever  to  exclude  a  love-story.  And  when  we 
consider  how  the  sentiment  of  Love  colours  all  modern  literature ; 
how  almost  impossible  it  is  for  a  play  or  a  novel  to  succeed  unless 
it  embodies  a  love-story :  the  absolute  ignoring  of  this  passion  in 
Greek  literature  forces  on  us  the  inevitable  conclusion  that 
Komantic  Love  was  unknown  to  them,  or  only  so  faintly 
developed  as  to  excite  no  interest  whatever. 

And  this  conclusion  harmonises  with  the  dictum  of  the  best 
Greek  scholars.  It  is  true  that  Becker,  in  his  Ckarikles,  referring 
to  the  frequency  with  which  the  comedians  introduce  a  youth 
desperately  enamoured  of  a  girl,  faintly  objects  to  the  statement 
that  "  There  is  no  instance  of  an  Athenian  falling  in  love  with  a 
free-born  woman,  and  marrying  her  from  violent  passion," — made 
by  Miiller  in  his  famous  work  on  the  Dorians.  But  he  makes  the 
fatal  admission  that  "Sensuality  was  the  soil  from  which  such 
passion  sprang,  and  none  other  than  a  sensual  love  was  acknow- 
ledged between  man  and  wife."  No  one,  of  course,  would  deny 
that  sensual  passion  prevailed  in  Athens;  but  sensuality  \a  the 
very  antipode  of  Romantic  Love. 


GREEK  LOVE  77 


WOMAN'S  POSITION 

How  are  we  to  account  for  this  anomaly — the  absence  of  sexual 
romance  in  a  nation  which  was  so  passionately  enamoured  of 
Beauty  in  its  various  forms  1 

The  answer  is  to  be  found  in  the  non-existence  of  opportunities 
for  courtship,  and  the  degraded  position  of  woman.  The  following 
sentences,  culled  at  random  from  Becker's  classical  work,  show  how 
the  Greek  men  regarded  their  women,  whom  they  considered  in- 
ferior to  themselves  in  heart  as  well  as  in  intellect.  Iphigenia 
herself  is  made  to  admit  by  Euripides  that  one  man  is  worth  more 
than  a  myriad  of  women  : — 

els  y  &VTIP  Kpetffffwv  ywaiKwv  ftvpluv. 

"  The  dpe-nt)  (virtue)  of  which  a  woman  was  thought  capable  in 
that  age  differed  but  little  from  that  of  a  faithful  slave."  "  Ex- 
cept in  her  own  immediate  circle,  a  woman's  existence  was  scarcely 
recognised."  "  It  was  quite  a  Grecian  view  of  the  case  to  consider 
a  wife  as  a  necessary  evil."  "  Athenians,  in  speaking  of  their 
wives  and  children,  generally  said  re/cva  /cat  ywou/cas,  putting 
their  wives  last :  a  phrase  which  indicates  very  clearly  what  was 
the  tone  of  feeling  ou  this  subject "  (Smith). 

Women  "were  not  allowed  to  conclude  any  bargain  or  transac- 
tion of  consequence  on  their  own  account,"  though  Plato  urged 
that  this  concession  should  be  made  to  them ;  and  it  was  even 
"  enacted  that  everything  a  man  did  by  the  counsel  or  request  of 
a  woman  should  be  null."  "  There  were  uo  educational  institu- 
tions for  girls,  nor  any  private  teachers  at  home."  '"Hence  there 
were  no  scientifically-learned  ladies,  with  the  exception  of  the 
Hetserae." 

CHAPERONAGE    VERSUS   COUKTSHIP 

In  such  an  arid,  rocky  soil  Love  of  course  could  not  grow  or 
even  germinate.  Still  more  fatal  to  the  romantic  passion,  however, 
was  the  absolute  seclusion  of  the  sexes,  precluding  all  possibility 
of  courtship  and  free  choice  among  the  young.  Greek  women 
were  not  allowed  to  enjoy  the  society  of  men,  nor  to  attend  "those 
public  spectacles  which  were  the  chief  means  of  Athenian  culture," 
and  which  would  have  afforded  the  young  folks  an  opportunity  of 
seeing  and  falling  in  love  with  one  another.  The  wife  was  not 
even  permitted  to  eat  with  her  hrsband  if  male  visitors  were 
present,  but  had  to  retire  to  her  private  apartments,  so  absurd 


78  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

was  the  jealousy  of  the  men.  "  The  maidens  lived  in  the  greatest 
seclusion  till  their  marriage,  and,  so  to  speak,  regularly  under  lock 
and  key,"  which  had  the  "  effect  of  rendering  the  girls  excessively 
bashful,  and  even  prudish,"  and  so  stupid,  in  all  probability,  that 
no  wonder  the  men  considered  marriage  a  punishment,  and  sought 
entertainment  with  the  educated  Hetserae — as  to-day  in  France. 
Even  young  married  women  were  obliged  to  have  a  chaperon. 
"No  respectable  lady  thought  of  going  out  without  a  female 
slave."  "Even  the  married  woman  shrank  back  and  blushed  if 
she  chanced  to  be  seen  at  the  window  by  a  man." 

PLATO   ON   COURTSHIP 

It  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  in  the  history  of  Love 
and  of  social  philosophy  that  Plato,  the  most  modern  of  all  ancient 
thinkers,  foresaw  the  importance  of  pre-matrimonial  acquaintance 
as  the  basis  of  a  rational  and  happy  marriage  choice  long  before 
any  other  writer.  Making  allowance  for  the  fact  that  Greek 
notions  as  to  what  is  within  "  the  rules  of  modesty"  differed  from 
our  own,  the  following  passage  cannot  be  too  deeply  pondered': 
"People,"  Plato  tells  us  in  the  sixth  book  of  the  Laws  (p.  771), 
"  must  be  acquainted  with  those  into  whose  families  and  to  whom 
they  marry  and  are  given  in  marriage  ;  in  such  matters  as  far  as 
possible  to  avoid  mistakes  is  all-important,  and  with  this  serious 
purpose  let  games  be  instituted,  in  which  youths  and  maidens 
shall  dance  together,  seeing  and  being  seen  naked,  at  a  proper  age 
and  on  a  suitable  occasion,  not  transgressing  the  rules  of  modesty." 

PARENTAL   VERSUS  LOVERS1   CHOICE 

Marriages  in  Greece  were  often  arranged  for  girls  while  they 
were  mere  children,  of  course  without  any  reference  to  their 
choice,  since  they  were  looked  upon  as  the  property  of  the  father, 
who  could  dispose  of  them  at  his  pleasure.  Besides  these  early 
betrothals  there  was  an  obstacle  to  free  choice  in  the  Athenian 
law  which  forbade  a  citizen  under  very  severe  penalties  to  marry 
a  foreigner.  And  again,  "  In  the  case  of  a  father  dying  intestate, 
and  without  male  children,  his  heiress  had  no  choice  in  marriage ; 
she  was  compelled  by  law  to  marry  her  nearest  kinsman,  not  in 
the  ascending  line.  .  .  .  Where  there  were  several  co-heiresses, 
they  were  respectively  married  to  their  kinsmen,  the  nearest  hav- 
ing the  first  choice  " — a  law  resembling  one  in  the  Jewish  code, 
and  exemplified  by  Ruth,  as  pointed  out  in  Smith's  Dictionary. 


GREEK  LOVE  70 

How  Sexual  Selection  was  rendered  impracticable  in  Greece 
is  further  shown  in  the  following  citations  from  Becker:  "The 
choice  of  the  bride  seldom  depended  on  previous,  or  at  least  on 
intimate  acquaintance.  More  attention  was  generally  paid  to  the 
position  of  a  damsel's  family,  and  the  amount  of  her  dowry,  than 
to  her  personal  qualities"  "  It  was  usual  for  a  father  to  choose 
for  his  son  a  wife,  and  one  perhaps  whom  the  bridegroom  had 
never  seen."  "  Widows  frequently  married  again  ;  this  was  often 
in  compliance  with  the  testamentary  dispositions  of  their  husbands, 
as  little  regard  being  paid  to  their  wishes  as  in  the  case  of  girls." 

Thus  we  see  that  three  causes  combined  to  prevent  the  growth 
of  Romantic  Love  in  Greece — the  degraded  position  of  women,  the 
absence  of  direct  Courtship,  and  the  impossibility  of  exercising 
Individual  Preference, 

THE   HET2EE.B 

That  the  absolute  seclusion  and  chaperonage  of  the  young 
women,  and  their  consequent  ignorance  and  insipidity,  were  the 
reasons  why  they  could  neither  feel  nor  inspire  Romantic  Love,  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  there  existed  in  Greece  in  the  time  of 
Perikles  a  mentally  superior  class  of  women  who  appear  to  have 
aroused  Love,  or  something  very  like  it,  by  means  of  the  artistic 
and  intellectual  charms  which  they  united  with  their  physical 
beauty.  These  women  were  called  'Eratpai,  or  companions,  evi- 
dently to  distinguish  them  from  the  domestic  women  who  were  no 
"  companions  "  after  the  first  charm  of  novelty  had  worn  away : 
a  state  of  affairs  for  which  of  course  the  men  themselves,  who 
gave  them  no  education  and  locked  them  up,  were  to  blame. 

What  seems  paradoxical  is  that  these  women,  who  were  morally 
inferior  to  the  others,  should  have  been  the  first  to  inspire  in  men 
a  more  refined  sort  of  Love;  but  the  paradox  is  rendeied  the 
more  probable  by  the  circumstance  that  in  India,  likewise,  we 
found  the  first  traces  of  Romantic  Love  among  the  Bayaderes,  a 
class  corresponding  to  the  Hetserae. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  Aspasia,  who  aided  the  greatest 
statesman  of  antiquity  in  writing  his  stirring  speeches,  inspired 
not  only  him  but  other  great  contemporaries  with  true  Romantic 
passion — which  they  were  enabled  to  feel  because  men  of  genius 
are  not  only  intellectually  but  also  emotionally  ahead  of  their 
time. 

Diotima  was  another  of  these  women.  She  was  also  revered 
as  a  prophetess,  and  is  credited  by  Plato  with  having  given 
Sokrates,  and  through  him  Greece,  the  first  adequate  discourse  on 


80  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Love — a  discourse,  we  may  add,  in  which  some  flashes  of  true 
modern  insight  are  mingled  with  the  curiously  confused  notions  of 
the  Greeks  on  the  subject  of  Love  and  Friendship.  What  these 
notions  were  is  best  seen  by  briefly  considering  the  peculiarities  of 


PLATONIC   LOVE 

On  this  subject  the  most  incorrect  and  absurd  notions  univer- 
sally pervade  modern  literature  and  conversation.  As  commonly 
understood,  "  Platonic  Love  "  means  a  friendship  between  a  man 
and  a  woman  from  which  all  traces  of  passion  are  excluded.  Such  a 
notion  is  utterly  foreign  to  Plato's  way  of  thinking,  and  is  nowhere 
referred  to  in  his  writings.  Platonic  love  has  nothing  to  do  with 
women  whatever.  It  is  an  attachment  between  a  man  and  a  youth, 
which  may  be  denned  as  friendship  united  with  the  ecstatic  ardour 
which  in  modern  life  is  associated  only  with  Komantic  Love. 

Mr.  George  Grote  thus  describes  what  he  calls  the  "  truly 
Platonic  conception  of  love  "  t  It  is  "  a  vehement  impulse  towards 
mental  communion  with  some  favoured  youth,  in  view  of  producing 
mental  improvement,  good,  and  happiness  to  both  persons  con- 
cerned :  the  same  impulse  afterwards  expanding,  so  as  to  grasp 
the  good  and  beautiful  in  a  larger  sense,  and  ultimately  to  fasten 
on  goodness  and  beauty  in  the  pure  Ideal." 

Once  more,  Platonic  love  might  be  defined  as  creative  friend- 
ship, which  has  for  its  object  the  conception  of  great  ideas, — of 
works  of  art,  literature,  philosophy.  Such  a  friendship,  Plato  tells 
us,  should  be  formed  between  a  man  and  a  youth,  not  too  young, 
but  when  his  beard  begins  to  grow  and  his  intellect  to  develop ; 
and  such  a  friendship  is  apt  to  last  throughout  life. 

Perhaps  the  most  striking  instance  in  Greek  literature  of 
Platonic  love  is  that  given  in  Plato's  Symposium  as  existing 
between  the  pure-minded  Sokrates,  who  kept  aloof  from  all  Greek 
vices,  and  the  beautiful  young  Alkibiades.  This  youth  thus 
describes  the  effect  which  the  discourse  of  Sokrates  has  on  him : 
"  When  I  hear  him,  my  heart  leaps  in  my  breast,  more  than  it 
does  among  the  Korybantes,  and  tears  roll  down  my  cheeks  at  his 
words,  and  I  notice  that  many  others  have  the  same  experience. 
When  I  heard  Perikles  and  other  excellent  orators,  I  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  they  spoke  well ;  but  this  experience  was  different 
from  the  other,  and  my  soul  did  not  lose  its  control  or  gnash  its 
teeth  like  a  prostrate  slave,  but  by  this  Marsyas  ( =  Sokrates)  I 
was  put  into  such  a  mood  that  the  condition  in  which  I  found 
myself  did  not  seem  praiseworthy." 


GREEK  LOVE  81 

He  further  describes  Sokrates  as  being  always  "  in  love  with 
beautiful  youths,  and  talking  with  them,  and  being  quite  beside 
himself " ;  hence  when  he  (Alkibiades)  appears  at  the  Symposium, 
and  finds  Sokrates  sitting  next  to  the  most  beautiful  man  in  the 
company,  he  chides  him  in  words  which  have  exactly  the  sound  of 
Jealousy  inspired  by  Romantic  Love  :  "  And  why  did  you  recline 
here  and  not  next  to  Aristophanes,  or  some  other  wit,  or  would-be 
wit,  but,  instead,  crowded  forward  in  order  to  be  next  to  the 
handsomest  ? " 

To  which  Sokrates  replies  :  "  Agathou,  come  to  my  assistance  ; 
for  my  love  for  this  person  has  cost  me  dearly.  Ever  since  I 
have  loved  him,  I  have  not  been  allowed  to  look  at  anybody,  or 
to  talk  with  any  one  who  is  beautiful,  or  else  this  youth,  in  his 
jealousy  and  envy,  does  unheard-of-things,  and  chides  me,  and 
hardly  refrains  from  violence.  Be  on  your  guard,  therefore,  that 
he  may  not  resort  to  violence  now,  and  reconcile  us,  or  if  he  dares 
to  become  unruly,  assist  me ;  for  I  very  much  fear  his  madness 
and  infatuation." 

Although  this  was  probably  said  in  the  playful  tone  common 
to  Sokrates,  it  yet  is  noticeable  how  closely  the  language  used 
resembles  the  language  of  modern  Romantic  Love. 

SAPPHO    AND    FEMALE    FKIENDSHIP 

To  this  form  of  Platonic  or  mono-sexual  love  there  existed  a 
female  counterpart,  as  shown  in  some  of  the  lyric  effusions  of 
Greek  poets.  Some  of  these  poets,  it  is  true,  especially  Anakreon, 
knew  naught  of  the  imaginative  side  of  Love — of  its  protracted 
tortures  and  intermittent  joys.  Like  a  butterfly  that  kisses  every 
flower  on  its  way,  he  "  cared  only  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  passing 
moment."  But  Sappho  apparently  wrote  of  Love  in  terms  worthy 
of  Heine  or  Byron,  as  shown  even  in  this  crude  translation  of  one 
of  her  poems  : — 

"While  gazing  on  thy  charms  I  hung, 
My  voice  died  faltering  on  my  tongue, 
"With  subtle  flames  my  bosom  glows, 
Quick  through  each  vein  the  poison  flows ; 
Dark  dimming  mists  my  eyes  surround, 
My  ears  with  hollow  murmurs  sound. 
My  linrbs  with  dewy  dullness  freeze, 
On  my  whole  frame  pale  tremblings  seize, 


And  losing  colour,  sense,  and  breath, 
I  seem  quite  languishing  in  death." 


Longinus  calls  this  the  most  perfect  expression  in  all  anciaat 

G 


82  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

literature  of  the  effects  of  Love.  It  happens,  however,  to  have 
nothing  to  do  with  Love.  For,  as  Plato's  "  love "  is  merely 
ecstatic  friendship  between  man  and  youth,  so  Sappho's  love  is 
friendship  between  two  women.  This  is  the  opinion  of  Bode  and 
Miiller,  and  it  is  entirely  borne  out  by  the  language  of  the  original 
text. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  Sappho,  being  a  woman,  and  a 
Greek  woman,  could  not  have  addressed  such  glowing  words  to  a 
man  without  violating  the  current  notions  of  decorum  ;  and  hence 
wrote  as  if  she  were  a  man  addressing  a  woman.  But  Sappho  was 
one  of  the  -ZEolian  women  who  had  greater  liberty  than  the 
Athenians ;  and  she  was,  moreover,  a  blue-stocking  who  would  not 
have  stuck  at  such  a  trifle  as  shocking  Greek  notions  regarding 
woman's  privileges.  And  in  some  of  her  poems  she  does  mention 
a  youth  "  to  whom  she  gave  her  whole  heart,  while  he  requited 
her  passion  with  cold  indifference  "  (Miiller). 

One  of  the  Platonists,  Maximus  Tyrius  (dis.  24,  p.  297),  takes 
the  same  view  regarding  Sappho.  "  The  love  of  the  Lesbian 
poet,"  he  says,  "  what  can  it  be,  if  we  may  compare  remote  with 
more  recent  things  than  the  Sokratic  art  of  love  1  For  both 
appear  to  promote  the  same  Friendship,  she  among  women,  he 
among  men.  They  both  confess  they  love  many,  and  are  capti- 
vated by  all  beauties.  For  what  Alkibiades  and  Charmides  are  to 
Sokrates,  Gyrinna  and  Atthis  and  Auaktoria  are  to  Sappho." 
"  Even  Sokrates  confesses  that  it  was  from  Sappho  that  he  partly 
derived  his  noble  views  of  the  enthusiastic  love  of  mental  beauty  " 
(Phcedon,  c.  225). 

To  one  of  the  girls  just  referred  to,  Sappho  addresses  these 
words :  "  Again  does  the  strength- dissolving  Eros,  that  bitter- 
sweet, resistless  monster,  agitate  me;  but  to  thee,  0  Atthis,  the 
thought  of  me  is  importunate;  thou  fliest  to  Andromeda."  "It 
is  obvious,"  says  Miiller,  "  that  this  attachment  bears  less  the 
character  of  maternal  interest  than  of  passionate  love ;  as  amongst 
Dorians  in  Sparta  and  Crete  analogous  connections  between  men 
and  youths,  in  which  the  latter  were  trained  to  noble  and  manly 
deeds,  were  carried  on  in  a  language  of  high-wrought  and  passion- 
ate feeling,  which  had  all  the  character  of  an  attachment  between 
persons  of  different  sexes.  This  mixture  of  feelings,  which  among 
nations  of  a  calmer  temperament  have  always  been  perfectly 
distinct,  is  an  essential  feature  of  the  Greek  character." 

Greek  Love,  i.e.  Friendship,  being  thus  tinged  and  strengthened, 
as  we  see  in  the  cases  of  Sokrates  and  Alkibiades,  Sappho  and 
Atthis,  by  jealousy,  ecstatic  adoration,  exclusiveness,  admiration 


GREEK  LOVE  88 

of  personal  beauty,  and  other  qualities  which  modern  civilisation 
has  transferred  to  Romantic  Love,  we  are  enabled  to  understand 
why  Friendship  was  so  much  more  potent  and  prevalent  in 
antiquity  than  it  is  now,  when,  having  lost  these  traits  through 
the  differentiation  of  emotions,  it  seems  "insipid  to  those  who 
have  tasted  Love." 

The  lesson  to  be  learned  from  this  whole  discussion  on  Greek 
Friendship  is  of  extreme  importance  to  the  psychology  of  Love. 
It  is  this :  The  Greeks  were  too  intellectual  and  refined  not  to 
have  at  least  a  vague  presentiment  of  the  higher  possibilities  and 
charms  of  imaginative  Love.  But  Greek  women — with  the  rare 
exceptions  referred  to — were  too  stupid  to  enable  the  men  to 
realise  their  vague  ideal.  Hence  they  sought  it  in  ardent  attach- 
ments to  youths,  who  were  quick-minded  and  able  to  sympathise 
with  their  intellectual  aspirations.  And  thus  Greek  Love  became 
identical  with  male  friendship — the  female  friendship  referred  to 
being  a  sort  of  compensating  echo. 

Greek  Love  is  symbolised  in  the  mythic  youth  Narcissus,  who 
scorns  all  the  beautiful  nymphs  that  are  eager  for  his  caresses,  and 
falls  in  love  with  his  own  image  reflected  in  the  water. 

GREEK   BEAUTY 

It  even  seems  as  if,  apart  from  Love,  the  Greeks  admired 
youthful  masculine  beauty  more  than  feminine  charms;  and  many 
of  them  would  probably  have  agreed  with  Schopenhauer  that  men 
are  more  beautiful  than  women.  Certain  it  is  that,  as  the  most 
eminent  critic  of  Greek  art,  Winckelmann,  points  out  "  the 
supreme  beauty  of  Greek  art  is  male  rather  than  female." 

The  following  citation  from  Grote's  famous  work  on  Plato 
suggests  some  reasons  for  this  fact,  besides  reflecting  further  light 
on  points  discussed  in  the  preceding  pages  : — 

"  In  the  Hellenic  point  of  view,  upon  which  Plato  builds,  the 
attachment  of  man  to  woman  was  regarded  as  a  natural  impulse 
and  as  a  domestic,  social  sentiment;  yet  as  belonging  to  a  common- 
place rather  than  to  an  exalted  mind,  and  seldom  or  never  rising 
to  that  pitch  of  enthusiasm  which  overpowers  all  other  emotions, 
absorbs  the  whole  man,  and  aims  either  at  the  joint  performance 
of  great  exploits,  or  the  joint  prosecution  of  intellectual  improve- 
ment by  continued  colloquy.  We  must  remember  that  the  wives 
and  daughters  of  citizens  were  seldom  seen  abroad;  that  she  had 
learned  nothing  except  spinning  and  weaving;  that  the  fact  of  her 
having  seen  so  little  and  heard  as  little  as  possible,  was  considered 


84  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

as  rendering  her  more  acceptable  to  her  husband ;  that  her  sphere 
of  duty  and  exertion  was  confined  to  the  interior  of  the  family. 
The  beauty  of  women  yielded  satisfaction  to  the  senses,  but  little 
beyond.  It  was  the  masculine  beauty  of  youth  that  fired  the 
Hellenic  imagination  with  glowing  and  impassioned  sentiment. 
The  finest  youths,  and  those,  too,  of  the  best  families  and  education, 
were  seen  habitually  uncovered  in  the  Palaestra  and  at  the  public 
festival-matches ;  engaged  in  active  contention  and  graceful  exercise, 
under  the  direction  of  professional  trainers.  The  sight  of  the 
living  form  in  such  perfection,  movement,  and  variety,  awakened  a 
powerful  emotional  sympathy,  blended  with  assthetic  sentiment, 
which  in  the  more  susceptible  natures  was  exalted  into  intense  and 
passionate  devotion.  The  terms  in  which  this  feeling  is  described, 
both  by  Plato  and  Xenophon,  are  among  the  strongest  which  the 
language  affords — and  are  predicated  even  of  Sokrates  himself. 
Far  from  being  ashamed  of  this  feeling,  they  consider  it  admirable 
and  beneficial,  though  very  liable  to  abuse,  which  they  emphatically 
denounce  and  forbid.  In  their  view  it  was  an  idealising  passion, 
which  tended  to  raise  a  man  above  the  vulgar  and  selfish  pursuits 
of  life,  and  even  above  the  fear  of  death.  The  devoted  attachments 
which  it  inspired  were  dreaded  by  the  despots,  who  forbade  the 
assemblage  of  youths  for  exercise  in  the  Palestra." 

Another  reason  for  the  Greek  preference  of  masculine  beauty  is 
suggested  by  Mr.  Lecky,  who  attributes  it  to  the  fact  that  the 
principal  art  of  the  Greeks,  sculpture,  is  "especially  suited  to 
represent  male  beauty,  or  the  beauty  of  strength " ;  whereas 
"female  beauty,  or  the  beauty  of  softness,"  became  the  principal 
object  of  the  painters,  after  Christianity  had  won  attention  for  the 
feminine  virtues  of  gentleness  and  delicacy.  (For  further  remarks 
on  Greek  Beauty,  see  the  chapters  on  "  Four  Sources  of  Beauty," 
and  "The  Nose.") 


Possibly  some  of  my  readers  have  not  yet  quieted  all  their  doubts 
regarding  the  existence  of  real  Love  among  the  Greeks ;  for  did 
they  not  have  special  deities  of  love — Aphrodite  and  Eros,  Venus 
and  Cupid  ?  Quite  so ;  but  those  familiar  with  Greek  history 
know  that  the  cult  of  Venus  had  but  a  remote  connection  with 
imaginative  or  Romantic  Love,  which  alone  is  here  under  considera- 
tion. Yet  our  modern  poets  owe  a  vast  debt  of  gratitude  to  the 
ancient  bards  for  these  mythic  deities,  whom  they  have  simply 
taken  and  idealised,  like  Love  itself.  There  is,  especially,  the 
mischievous  Dan  Cupid,  who,  in  his  modern  metamorphosis,  is  still 


GREEK  LOVE  85 

"  the  anointed  sovereign  of  sighs  and  groans."  This  little  fellow 
seems  to  have  been  taken  very  seriously  indeed  by  the  earliest 
Greeks.  He  has  one  attribute — wings — which  we  readily  under- 
stand, as  Love  is  inconstant  ever;  but  another  of  his  attributes 
would  excite  the  greatest  surprise  in  our  minds  were  we  not  so 
accustomed  to  it  as  to  accept  it  as  a  matter  of  course,  namely,  his 
arrows.  It  would  seem  more  in  accordance  with  modern  notions 
that  he  should  produce  his  magic  effects  by  means  of  Love-potions 
or  other  Love-charms,  rather  than  with  such  a  warlike  weapon  as 
an  arrow. 

A  German  feuilletonist,  Dr.  Michael  Haberlandt,  has  lately 
advanced  an  ingenious  theory  to  account  for  this  weapon.  The 
ancient  Greeks  had  the  peculiar  belief  that  all  diseases  were  caused 
by  the  invisible  poisoned  arrows  of  evil  or  angry  deities ;  as  in  the 
well-known  case  of  the  offended  Apollo  sending  his  pest-laden 
arrows  among  the  Hellenes.  Now  love,  in  the  irresistible  and 
maddening,  though  primitive  form  known  to  the  early  Greeks,  was 
doubtless  looked  on  as  a  real,  mysterious  affliction,  and  not  merely 
as  love  sickness  in  the  figurative  modern  sense:  what  more  natural 
therefore  than  to  attribute  it  to  the  arrows  of  a  mischievous  deity1? 

In  course  of  time  poetic  fancy  added  to  the  image  of  Cupid 
other  attributes  that  naturally  suggested  themselves :  the  wings  to 
symbolise  fickleness;  a  bandage  to  indicate  blindness;  while  the 
arrows  were  represented  as  dipped  in  poison,  gall,  or  honey.  The 
curious  fact  may  be  added  that  the  ancient  East  Indians,  whose 
deities  numbered  330,000,000  (in  round  numbers),  likewise  had  a 
god  of  love  armed  with  bow  and  arrows  :  a  conception  which  they 
seem  to  have  originated  independently  of  the  Greeks. 

ORIGIN   OF  LOVE 

Plato's  Symposium  contains  two  curious  theories  of  the  cause 
and  origin  of  love,  which,  in  conclusion,  may  be  briefly  summarised, 
as  they  help  to  characterise  Greek  notions  on  this  subject.  The 
first  is  placed  in  the  mouth  of  Sokrates,  who  says  he  heard  it  of 
the  Hetaira  Diotima,  What,  she  asks,  is  the  cause  of  this  love- 
sickness,  this  anxiety  of  men  and  animals,  first  to  get  a  mate,  and 
then  to  take  care  of  the  offspring  ?  It  is,  she  replies,  the  desire  to 
perpetuate  themselves.  For  just  as  the  famous  heroes  and 
heroines — Alkestis,  Achilles,  Kadros — would  not  have  so  nobly 
sacrificed  their  lives  had  they  not  been  sustained  by  the  thought 
that  their  fame  and  glory  would  survive  among  future  generations ; 
BO  the  fact  that  parents  in  the  affection  for  their  young  will  even 


KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

go  so  far  as  to  sacrifice  their  own  lives  to  protect  them,  is  due  to 
their  craving  for  immortality  in  their  offspring. 

This  theory  may  be  regarded  as  a  vague  foreshadowing  of 
Schopenhauer's,  which  will  be  considered  in  another  place. 

The  second  theory  of  the  origin  of  love  is  attributed  by  Plato  to 
Aristophanes,  who  relates  it  in  the  form  of  a  myth.  Human 
nature,  he  begins,  was  not  always  as  it  is  now.  At  the  beginning 
there  were  three  sexes :  one,  the  male,  descended  of  the  sun-god ; 
the  second,  female,  descended  of  the  earth ;  and  the  third,  which 
united  the  attributes  of  both  sexes,  descended  of  the  moon.  Each 
of  these  beings,  moreover,  had  two  pairs  of  hands  and  legs,  and 
two  faces,  and  the  figure  was  round,  and  in  rapid  motion  revolved 
like  a  wheel,  the  pairs  of  legs  alternately  touching  the  ground  and 
describing  an  arc  in  the  air. 

These  beings  were  fierce,  powerful,  and  vain,  so  they  attempted 
to  storm  heaven  and  attack  the  gods.  As  Zeus  did  not  wish  to 
destroy  them — since  that  would  have  deprived  him  of  sacrifices 
and  other  forms  of  human  devotion — he  resolved  to  punish  them 
by  diminishing  their  strength.  So  he  directed  Apollo  to  cut  each 
of  them  into  two,  which  was  done;  and  thus  the  number  of  human ' 
beings  was  doubled.  Each  of  these  half-beings  now  continually 
wandered  about,  seeking  its  other  half.  And  when  they  found 
each  other,  their  only  desire  was  to  be  reunited  by  Vulcan  and 
never  be  parted  again.  "And  this  longing  and  striving  after 
union — this  is  what  is  meant  by  the  name  of  Love." 

The  waggish  Aristophanes  appends  a  caution  to  human  beings 
not  to  offend  Zeus  again,  because  it  was  that  god's  intention,  on  a 
repetition  of  the  offence,  to  split  human  beings  once  more,  so  that 
they  would  have  to  hop  about  on  one  leg ! 

One  of  the  metaphors  used  by  the  comic  poet  is  very  pretty, 
even  if  translated  into  terms  of  Modern  Love.  He  compares  the 
two  divided  halves  of  one  human  being  to  the  dice  which  among 
the  ancients  were  used  as  marks  of  hospitality,  being  broken  into 
two  pieces,  of  which  each  person  received  one,  and  which  were 
afterwards  fitted  together  in  token  of  recognition.  A  pair  of 
lovers,  then,  are  like  these  halved  dice,  naturally  belonging  to 
each  other,  and  craving  to  be  reunited. 

ROMAN  LOVE 

WOMAN'S  POSITION 

Among  the  Romans  the  domestic  position  of  women  was  on  the 
whole  much  more  favourable  to  the  growth  of  feminine  culture 


ROMAN  LOVE  87 

than  in  Greece.  They  were  not  jealously  guarded  in  special  apart- 
ments, but  were  allowed  to  retain  their  seat  at  the  table  and  join 
in  the  conversation  when  guests  arrived,  as  Cornelius  Nepos  points 
out  with  a  pardonable  sense  of  superiority.  Becker,  in  his  Gallus, 
thus  states  the  difference  between  Greek  and  Roman  treatment  of 
women  :  "  Whilst  we  see  that  in  most  of  the  Grecian  states,  and 
especially  in  Athens,  the  women  (i.e.  the  whole  female  sex)  were 
little  esteemed  and  treated  as  children  all  their  lives,  confined  to 
the  gynaikoreitis,  shut  out  from  social  life  and  all  intercourse  with 
men  and  their  amusements,  we  find  that  in  Rome  exactly  the 
reverse  was  the  case.  Although  the  wife  is  naturally  subordinate 
to  the  husband,  yet  she  is  always  treated  with  open  attention  and 
regard.  The  Roman  housewife  always  appears  as  the  mistress  of 
the  whole  household  economy,  instructress  of  the  children,  and 
guardian  of  the  honour  of  the  house,  equally  esteemed  with  the 
paterfamilias  both  in  and  out  of  the  house." 

"  Walking  abroad  was  only  limited  by  scruple  and  custom,  not 
by  a  law  or  the  jealous  will  of  the  husband.  The  women  fre- 
quented public  theatres  as  well  as  the  men,  and  took  their  places 
with  them  at  festive  banquets."  "Even  the  vestals  participated 
in  the  banquets  of  the  men."  Although  "learned  women  were 
dreaded,"  a  knowledge  of  Greek  and  the  fine  arts  was  in  later 
times  counted  an  essential  part  of  feminine  culture.  "  Certain 
advantages  accrued  to  those  who  had  many  children,  jits  trium 
liber  orum"  Masculine  "voluntary  celibacy  was  considered,  in 
very  early  times,  as  censurable  and  even  guilty ;"  and  from 
Festus  "we  learn  that  there  was  a  celibate  fine."  The  statement 
apparently  credited  by  Mr.  Lecky  that  for  520  years  there  was  no 
case  of  divorce  in  Rome,  has  been  shown  to  rest  on  a  misconcep- 
tion of  a  passage  in  Gellius.  Yet  "  manners  were  so  severe,  that 
a  senator  was  censured  for  indecency  because  he  had  kissed  his 
wife  in  the  presence  of  their  daughter."  It  was  also  considered 
"  in  a  high  degree  disgraceful  for  a  Roman  mother  to  delegate  to 
a  nurse  the  duty  of  suckling  her  child." 

NO   WOOING   AND   CHOICE 

Yet  amid  all  these  domestic  virtues  and  family  affections  we 
search  in  vain  for  the  prevalence  of  Romantic  Love.  We  have 
already  seen  that  for  the  growth  of  this  sentiment  something  more 
is  needed  than  domestic  affection,  and  that  something  is  comprised 
in  the  word  WOOING.  There  was  no  wooing  at  Rome.  In  most 
cases,  the  father  took  his  daughter's  heart  in  his  hand,  and,  treat- 


88  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

ing  it  as  a  piece  of  personal  property,  bestowed  it  on  the  suitoi 
who  best  "  suited  "  him.  "  From  the  earliest  times,"  says  Ploss, 
"  it  was  customary  in  Rome  to  marry  girls  when  they  had  barely 
reached  their  twelfth  or  thirteenth  year ;  engagements  were  prob- 
ably made  at  a  still  earlier  age.  Although  legally  the  daughter's 
consent  was  required,  in  actual  practice  s/ie  exercised  no  choice;  her 
extreme  youth  in  itself  preventing  this.  Often  a  marriage  con- 
tract was  a  mere  matter  of  agreement  between  two  families  in 
which  love  and  personal  favour  were  disregarded ;  nor  did  even  the 
betrothal  bring  the  future  couple  into  closer  intimacy."  With 
reference  to  the  laws  of  the  Twelve  Tablets,  M.  Legouve'  remarks, 
in  his  Histoire  Morale  des  Femmes,  that  "  Rome  was  worthy  of 
Athens.  Not  only  did  a  Roman  father  dispose  of  his  daughter 
against  her  inclination,  but  he  even  had  the  right  to  dissolve  a 
marriage  into  which  she  had  entered,  and  to  take  away  from  his 
daughter  the  husband  he  had  given  her,  whom  she  loved,  and  by 
whom  she  had  children."  In  justice,  however,  it  must  be  added 
that  this  latter  right  was  rarely  exercised ;  but  the  fact  that  the 
Romans  could  tolerate  the  very  notion  of  such  a  law  shows  what 
little  account  was  made  of  love. 

Another  absurd  impediment  to  personal  choice  was  raised  by 
the  Theodosian  Code,  which  compelled  a  girl  to  marry  a  man  who 
had  the  some  calling  as  her  father— a  custom  which,  indeed,  seems 
to  prevail  in  parts  of  Europe  to  the  present  day,  and  which  is  as 
incompatible  with  Love  as  the  ancient  Hebrew  rule  that  the  oldest 
daughter  must  be  married  first — a  rule  which  compelled  Jacob  to 
marry  Leah  before  he  could  get  his  beloved  Rachel,  for  whom  he 
had  laboured  seven  years.  "First  come  first  served"  is  a  rule 
which  Cupid  rarely  heeds  in  the  case  of  several  sisters. 

In  the  case  of  the  men  it  is  possible  that  Sexual  Selection 
occasionally  came  into  play,  when  early  betrothals  did  not  prevent 
it ;  for  the  old  Romans  were  too  rational  to  anticipate  the  silly 
and  criminal  French  custom  of  bargaining  for  a  bride  before  they 
had  even  seen  her.  In  such  a  case,  if  the  bride  was  attractive,  the 
suitor's  imagination,  dwelling  on  the  fact  that  this  vision  of  love- 
liness was  to  be  his  own,  exclusively,  for  ever,  may  have  been 
warmed  for  a  moment  with  something  veiy  like  romantic  senti- 
ment. But  beauty  in  Rome,  Ovid  informs  us,  was  very  rare — 
"  How  few  are  able  to  boast  it !" — so  that  even  with  the  men  whc 
had  a  choice,  Individual  Preference  based  on  Personal  Beaut; 
could  have  been  rarely  exercised.  And  as  for  the  women  who  had 
no  choice,  they  may  have  felt  a  temporary  elation  on  first  meeting 
their  destined  husbands ;  but  this  feeling  was  merely  the  manifes- 


ROMAN  LOVE  89 

tation  of  a  vague  instinct,  comparable  to  the  "  love  "  which  a  bevy 
of  modern  boarding-school  "  buds  "  show  for  the  only  man  they  are 
allowed  to  see  regularly, — their  ugly  teacher, — and  the  unreality 
and  silliness  of  which  they  laugh  at  themselves  when  they  are  at 
last  allowed  to  meet  the  man  of  their  own,  individual,  free  choice, 
who  teaches  them  the  feeling  of  real  Romantic  Love. 

VIKGIL,    DRYDEN,    AND   SCOTT 

Nevertheless,  compared  with  Greek  literature,  the  works  of  the 
Roman  poets  show  an  advance  in  their  conception  of  Love ;  for 
they  avoid  at  least  the  Hellenic  confusion  of  love  with  friendship. 
Compared  with  the  best  modern  poets,  however,  who  labour  with 
the  pure  gold  of  Love  alone,  the  Roman  poet's  productions  sfcill 
show  much  of  the  base  ore  from  which  the  modern  gold  has  been 
extracted.  It  is  interesting,  in  this  connection,  to  read  what 
Dryden  has  to  say  concerning  Virgil's  conception  of  Love,  and 
Scott's  comments  on  Dryden. 

In  his  dedication  of  the  jEneid,  Dryden  speaks  of  Book  IV.  as 
"This  noble  episode,  wherein  the  whole  passion  of  love  is  more 
exactly  described  than  in  any  other  poet.  Love  was  the  theme 
of  his  fourth  book ;  and  though  it  is  the  shortest  of  the  whole 
^Eneis,  yet  there  he  has  given  its  beginning,  its  progress,  its  tra- 
verses, and  its  conclusion;  and  had  exhausted  so  entirely  his 
subject,  that  he  could  resume  it  but  very  slightly  in  the  eight 
ensuing  books. 

"  JShe  was  warmed  with  the  graceful  appearance  of  the  hero ; 
she  smothered  those  sparkles  out  of  decency;  but  conversation 
blew  them  up  into  a  flame.  Then  she  was  forced  to  make  a  con- 
fidante of  her  whom  she  might  best  trust,  her  own  sister,  who 
approves  the  passion,  and  thereby  augments  it :  then  succeeds  her 
public  owning  it;  and  after  that  the  consummation.  Of  Venus 
and  Juno,  Jupiter  and  Mercury,  I  say  nothing ;  for  they  were  all 
machining  work;  but,  possession  having  cooled  his  love,  as  it 
increased  hers,  she  soon  perceived  the  change,  or  at  least  grew 
suspicious  of  a  change ;  this  suspicion  soon  turned  to  jealousy,  and 
jealousy  to  rage ;  then  she  disdains  and  threatens,  and  again  is 
humble  and  entreats,  and  nothing  availing,  despairs,  curses,  and  at 
last  becomes  her  own  executioner.  See  here  the  whole  process  of 
that  passion,  to  which  nothing  can  be  added." 

Sir  Walter  Scott,  however,  does  add,  in  a  foot-note  to  his 
edition  of  Dryden :  "  I  am  afraid  this  passage,  given  as  a  just 
description  of  love,  serves  to  confirm  what  is  elsewhere  stated,  that 


90  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Dryden's  ideas  of  the  female  sex  and  of  the  passion  were  very  gross 
and  malicious." 

OVID'S   AKT    OP   MAKING  LOVE 

Gross  and  malicious  also  are  the  ideas  of  the  female  sex  and  the 
passion  frequently  encountered  in  the  poems  of  Ovid ;  not  so  coarse 
and  cynical,  indeed,  as  in  Martial  and  Catullus,  but  sufficiently  so 
to  have  confounded  the  aesthetic  judgment  of  the  present  genera- 
tion, and  spread  the  notion  that  Virgil  and  Horace  are  greater 
poets  than  Ovid,  whereas,  from  the  point  of  view  of  originality  and 
imaginativeness,  by  far  the  greatest  of  the  three  is  Ovid,  who  also 
had  much  more  influence  on  the  great  writers  of  the  best  period  of 
English  literature  than  his  rivals,  as  Professor  W.  Y.  Sellar  has 
pointed  out. 

Both  these  circumstances  are  to  be  regretted — the  undervalua- 
tion of  Ovid's  genius  as  well  as  his  frequent  frivolity  on  which  it 
is  based.  For  Ovid  was  unquestionably  the  first  poet  who  had 
a  conception  of  the  higher  possibilities  of  Love ;  in  fact  he  was 
the  greatest,  and  the  only  great,  Love-poet  before  Dante.  His 
rare  genius  enabled  him  to  anticipate  and  depict  the  modern  ima- 
ginative side  of  Love,  even  while  he  seemed  wholly  devoted  to  the 
ancient  sensual  side.  And,  in  reading  his  poems,  great  caution  is 
necessary,  lest  these  emotional  anticipations  of  his  quasi- modern 
genius  be  supposed  to  have  been  common  and  prevalent  among 
less  gifted  Romans  of  his  time. 

Ovid  was  a  profound  observer  and  psychologist,  and  had  a 
most  subtle  knowledge  of  contemporary  feminine  nature ;  Although 
the  principal  object  of  his  Ars  Amoris  is  to  teach  men  how  to 
out-trump  the  natural  cunning  of  women,  yet  he  does  not  forget 
his  feminine  readers,  but  gives  them  numerous  hints  regarding 
the  best  way  of  fascinating  fickle  men.  In  the  Remedia  Amoris 
he  describes  various  remedies  for  healing  Cupid's  wounds,  most  of 
which  are  approved  to  the  present  day ;  and  the  Elegies  and 
Heroides,  too,  are  full  of  pretty  modern  touches  and  flashes  of 
insight.  A  few  of  these  points  may  be  briefly  alluded  to. 

Coyness,  although  often  manifested  by  the  Roman  women  in 
almost  as  crude  a  manner  as  among  savages,  does  not  appear  to 
have  been  appreciated  by  all  of  them  at  its  full  value ;  so  the  poet 
frequently  counsels  them  as  to  the  more  subtle  ways  of  exercising 
it  j  one  of  his  rules  for  women  being,  that  if  they  have  offended 
an  admirer,  the  best  way  to  make  him  forget  it  is  to  pretend  to 
be  offended  themselves,  which  will  restore  the  equilibrium.  How 
the  consciousness  of  being  beautiful  makes  a  woman  courageous, 


ROMAN  LOVE  91 

coy.  and  cruel  is  shown  in  another  place.  That  eyes  have  a 
language  plainer  than  speech  is  not  a  modern  discovery  ;  and  that 
a  short  absence  favours,  long  absence  kills,  passion  was  also  known 
to  Ovid.  He  warns  men  against  the  danger  of  feigning  love, 
because  this  may  end  in  arousing  genuine  passion.  Men  are 
informed  that  courage  and  confidence  in  one's  ability  to  win  a 
woman  are  half  the  battle.  And  disappointed  lovers  are  assured 
that  failure  sometimes  turns  into  an  advantage,  for  it  may  arouse 
pity,  and  love  enter  in  the  guise  of  friendship. 

The  emotional  hyperbole  and  mixed  feelings  of  Love  are  not 
strangers'  to  Ovid.  He  compares  the  tortures  of  Love  to  the 
berries  on  the  trees  in  number,  to  the  shells  on  the  sea-beach  ;  for 
true  Love,  he  says,  always  creates  anguish  and  pain  ;  and  "the 
sweetest  torment  on  earth  is  woman."  Among  the  companions  of 
Cupid  are  "flattery  and  illusion."  But  "even  if  the  beloved 
deceives  me  with  false  words,  hope  itself  will  yield  me  great 
enjoyment,"  could  only  have  been  written  by  one  who  realised 
the  imaginative  side  of  love.  And  in  another  passage  the  poet 
directly  enjoins  the  necessity  of  intellectual  culture  to  take  the 
place  of  the  faded  charms  of  youth. 

Hero's  Letter  to  Leander  in  the  Heroides  contains  some  pretty 
touches.  Leander  has  informed  his  love  that  when  the  storm 
prevents  him  from  swimming  over  to  her,  his  mind  yet  hastens  to 
meet  her.  But  Hero  is  in  great  trouble  at  his  prolonged  absence, 
and  her  deepest  anguish  is  Jealousy  of  a  possible  rival :  in  the 
absence  of  real  grounds  of  apprehension,  her  imagination  invents 
them,  as  in  a  modern  lover's  mind.  She  suspects  that  his  passion 
has  lost  the  ardour  which  sustained  him  in  his  difficult  feat ;  and, 
too  weak  to  quite  swim  over  to  him  and  back  again,  and  anxious 
to  save  him  the  double  journey,  she  suggests  that  they  should 
meet  in  the  middle  of  the  sea,  exchange  a  kiss,  and  each  return  to 
the  shore  whence  they  came. 

Is  there  anything  more  exquisitely  romantic  or  pathetic  in  all 
modern  Love-poetry — in  Shakspere,  Heine,  Burns,  or  Byron  ? 

BIRTH   OF   GALLANTRY 

Becker  says  of  the  Greeks  that  "  The  men  were  very  careful  as 
to  their  behaviour  in  the  presence  of  women,  but  they  were  quite 
strangers  to  those  minute  attentions  which  constitute  the  gallantry 
of  the  moderns."  This  holds  true  apparently  of  all  other  nations  of 
antiquity  ;  and  to  a  student  of  the  history  of  Love  it  is  therefore 
of  exceeding  interest  to  find  in  Ovid's  poetry  the  first  evidences 


92  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

of  the  existence  of  Gallantry — a  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  men 
to  sacrifice  their  own  comfort  to  the  pleasures  and  whims  of  women. 

Mr.  G.  A.  Simcox  was  the  first  writer,  so  far  as  I  know,  who 
pointed  out  Ovid's  priority  in  this  matter  (in  his  History  of  Latin 
Literature).  In  Ovid,  he  says,  "The  whole  description  of  gallantry 
implies  that  the  idea  was  a  novelty,  and  that  the  lover  woidd 
require  a  great  deal  of  encouragement  to  enable  him  to  make  the 
sacrifice  of  paying  such  attentions  as  could  be  commanded  from  a 
servant.  This  throws  a  new  light  on  the  habit  the  Augustan 
poets  have  of  calling  their  mistress  domina,  which  is  more  note- 
worthy, for  they  call  no  man  dominus.  One  does  not  trace  the 
idea  at  all  in  Latin  comedy,  where  the  heroines  are  for  the  most 
part  only  too  thankful  to  be  caressed  and  protected.  One  finds  the 
word  in  Lucilius,  but  even  in  Catullus  it  is  hardly  established." 

Instances  of  gallant  behaviour  are  not  rare  in  Ovid's  poetry ; 
but  the  didactic  tone  in  which  they  are  detailed  makes  it  almost 
appear  as  if  the  poet  were  recommending  to  his  countrymen  the 
value  of  a  nice  little  discovery  of  his  own  which  would  convert 
crude  love-making  into  a  fine  art.  Never  be  so  ungallant — he 
says  in  effect,  though  he  does  not  use  the  word — as  to  refer  to  a 
woman's  faults  or  shortcomings.  Compliment  her,  on  the  con- 
trary, on  her  good  points — her  face,  her  hair,  her  tapering  fingers, 
her  pretty  foot.  At  the  circus  applaud  whatever  she  applauds. 
Adjust  her  cushion,  put  the  footstool  where  it  ought  to  be,  and 
keep  her  comfortable  by  fanning  her.  And  at  dinner,  when  she 
has  tasted  the  wine,  quickly  seize  the  cup  and  put  your  lips  to  the 
place  where  she  has  sipped. 

Unfortunately  this  morning  dawn  of  Romantic  Love,  as  de- 
picted in  the  pages  of  Ovid,  was  soon  hidden  beneath  the  dark 
clouds  of  medieval  barbarism,  not  to  emerge  again  till  a  thousand 
years  later. 

MEDIAEVAL  LOVE 

CELIBACY   VERSUS  MARRIAGE 

Were  I  asked  to  name  the  four  most  refining  influences  in 

•\J       modern  civilisation  I  would  answer :  Women,  Beauty,  Love,  and 

Marriage.      Were   I   asked   to   name  the  essence  of  the   early 

mediaeval  spirit  I  would  say :    Deadly  Enmity  toward  Women, 

Beauty,  Love,  and  Marriage. 

This  pathologic  attitude  of  the  mediaeval  mind  was  at  first  a 

^        natural  reaction  against  the  incredible  depravity  and  licentiousness 

that  prevailed  under  the  Roman  Empire.     But  the  reaction  went 


MEDIEVAL  LOVE  93 

to  such  preposterous  extremes  that  the  resulting  state  of  affairs 
was  even  more  degrading  and  deplorable  than  the  original  evil. 
It  was  like  inoculating  a  man  with  leprosy  to  cure  him  of  small- 
pox. It  was  bad  enough  to  treat  marriage  as  a  farce,  as  did  the 
later  Romans,  among  whom  there  were  women  who  had  their 
eighth  and  tenth  husband,  while  one  case  is  related  of  a  woman 
"  who  was  married  to  her  twenty-third  husband,  she  herself  being 
his  twenty-first  wife  "  ;  while  the  public  looked  upon  this  case  as 
a  "  match  "  in  a  double  sense,  the  survivor  being  publicly  crowned 
and  feted  as  champion.  But  a  thousand  times  worse  was  the 
medieval  notion  that  marriage  is  a  crime.  And  this  preposterous 
notion — that  a  relation  on  which  all  civilisation  is  based,  which  is 
sanctioned  even  by  many  animals  and  ignored  by  only  the  very 
lowest  of  the  savages — this  criminal  notion  was  foisted  on  the 
world  by  the  fanatical  priesthood  in  whose  hands  unfortunately 
Christianity  was  placed  for  centuries,  to  be  distorted,  vitiated,  and 
utilised  for  political,  criminal,  and  selfish  purposes. 

"The  services  rendered,"  says  Mr.  Lecky,  "by  the  ascetics  in 
imprinting  on  the  minds  of  men  a  profound  and  enduring  convic- 
tion of  the  importance  of  chastity,  though  extremely  great,  were 
seriously  counterbalanced  by  their  noxious  influence  upon  marriage. 
Two  or  three  beautiful  descriptions  of  this  institution  have  been 
culled  out  of  the  immense  mass  of  patristic  writings ;  but  in 
general  it  would  be  difficult  to  conceive  anything  more  coarse  and 
more  repulsive  than  the  manner  in  which  they  regarded  it.  ... 
The  tender  love  which  it  elicits,  the  holy  and  beautiful  domestic 
qualities  that  follow  in  its  train,  were  almost  absolutely  omitted 
from  consideration.  The  object  of  the  ascetic  was  to  attract  men 
to  a  life  of  virginity,  and,  as  a  necessary  consequence,  marriage 
was  treated  as  an  inferior  state." 

"The  days  of  Chivalry  were  not  yet,"  we  read  in  Smith's 
Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities,  "  and  we  cannot  but  notice 
even  in  the  greatest  of  the  Christian  fathers  a  lamentably  low  esti- 
mate of  woman,  and,  consequently,  of  the  marriage  relationship." 

What  an  inexhaustible  source  of  medieval  immorality  this 
contemptuous  treatment  of  marriage  by  the  most  influential  class 
of  society  proved,  has  been  so  often  depicted  in  glaring  colours 
that  these  pages  need  not  be  tainted  with  illustrations. 

WOMAN'S  LOWEST  DEGRADATION 

Woman  was  represented  by  the  Fathers  "  as  the  door  of  hell, 
as  the  mother  of  all  human  ills.  She  should  be  ashamed  at  the 


94  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

very  thought  that  she  is  a  woman ;  she  should  live  in  continual 
penance  on  account  of  the  curses  she  has  brought  upon  the  world. 
Women  were  even  forbidden  by  a  provincial  council  in  the 
sixth  century,  on  account  of  their  impurity,  to  receive  the 
Eucharist  into  their  naked  hands.  Their  essentially  subordinate 
position  was  continually  maintained  "  (Lecky). 

Not  even  the  Koran  took  such  a  degrading  view  of  woman  as 
these  early  "  Christian  Fathers."  For  the  current  notion  that  the 
existence  of  a  soul  in  woman  is  denied  by  the  Mahometan  faith  is 
contradicted  by  several  passages  in  the  Koran. 

The  lowest  depths  of  feminine  degradation  and  the  sublimest 
heights  of  fanatical  folly  and  crime,  however,  were  not  reached  in 
this  early  period,  but  some  centuries  later,  when  the  incredible 
brutalities  of  the  witchcraft  trials  began.  The  vast  majority  of 
the  victims  were  women ;  and  Professor  Scherr,  in  his  Geschichte 
der  Deutschen  Frauenwelt,  estimates  that  in  Germany  alone  at 
least  one  hundred  thousand  "  witches  "  were  burnt  at  the  stake. 
No  one  on  reading  the  accounts  of  these  trials  can  help  feeling 
that  Shakspere  made  a  mistake  when  he  wrote  that 

"  All  the  world's  a  stage, 
And  all  the  men  and  women  merely  players." 

He  should  have  said, 

"Air the  world's  a  madhouse, 
And  all  the  men  are  fools  and  demons." 

More  demons  than  fools,  however.  Superstition  was,  indeed, 
epidemic  during  the  Middle  Ages ;  but  those  who  superintended 
the  witches'  trials — the  rulers  and  the  clergy — were  not  the 
persons  affected  by  it.  If  they  did  execute  100,000  victims  in 
Germany  ;  if  they  did  murder  girls  of  twelve,  ten,  eight,  and  even 
seven  years,  on  the  accusation  of  having  borne  children  whose 
father  was  Satan,  or  of  having  murdered  persons  who  in  some 
cases  were  actually  present  at  the  trial — the  reason  of  this  was 
not  because  the  authorities  believed  this  cruel  nonsense.  The  real 
reason  is  given  by  Scherr  :  "  The  circumstance  that  the  property 
of  those  who  were  burnt  at  the  stake  was  confiscated,  two-thirds 
if  it  getting  into  the  hands  of  the  landowner  (Grundherr),  the 
other  third  into  those  of  the  judges,  clergy,  accusers,  and  execu- 
tioners, has  beyond  doubt  kindled  countless  witch-fires.  .  .  .  During 
the  Thirty  Years'  War,  especially,  the  trials  for  witchcraft  became 
a  greedily-utilised  source  of  profit  to  many  a  country  nobleman  in 
reduced  circumstances,  and  no  less  to  bishops,  abbots,  and 
councillors,  who  were  in  financial  straits.  Indeed,  as  early  as  the 


MEDIEVAL  LOVE  95 

sixteenth  century,  one  of  the  opponents  of  witches'  trials,  Cornelius 
Loos,  justly  observed  that  the  whole  proceeding  was  simply  '  a 
newly-invented  alchemy  for  converting  human  blood  into  gold.'  " 

What  difference  is  there  between  these  civilised  savages  and 
the  Australian  who  eats  his  wife  when  he  gets  tired  of  her  ?  Let 
those  who  are  fond  of  seeking  needles  in  haystacks  search  fur 
traces  of  Romantic  Love  under  such  circumstances. 


NEGATION   OF   FEMININE    CHOICE 

Feudal  legislation  combined  with  clerical  contempt  and  criminal 
persecution  in  lowering  woman's  position.  There  were  numerous 
and  stringent  enactments  which  "rendered  it  impossible  for 
women  to  succeed  to  any  considerable  amount  of  property,  and 
which  almost  reduced  them  to  the  alternative  of  marriage  or  a 
nunnery.  The  complete  inferiority  of  the  sex  was  continually 
maintained  by  the  law;  and  that  generous  public  opinion  which 
in  Rome  had  frequently  revolted  against  the  injustice  done  to 
girls,  in  depriving  them  of  the  greater  part  of  the  inheritance  of 
their  fathers,  totally  disappeared."  Beaumanoir  says  that  "Every 
husband  may  beat  his  wife  if  she  refuses  to  obey  his  orders,  or  if 
she  speaks  ill  of  him  or  tells  an  untruth,  provided  he  does  so  with 
moderation."  Early  German  law  permitted  the  father,  and 
subsequently  the  husband,  to  sell,  punish,  or  even  kill  the  wife ; 
and  in  England  wife-beating  has  not  yet  died  out. 

"  If,  in  the  tim'es  of  St.  Louis,"  says  Legouve',  "  a  young  vassal 
of  some  royal  fief  was  sought  in  marriage,  it  was  necessary  for  her 
father  to  get  his  seigneur's  permission  for  her  marriage ;  the 
seigneur  asked  the  king's  consent  to  his  permission,  and  not'  till 
after  all  these  agreements  (father,  seigneur,  king)  was  she  consulted 
regarding  this  contract  which  affected  her  whole  life."  How 
beautifully  such  a  law  must  have  fostered  the  sentiment  of  Love 
which  depends  on  Individual  Preference  and  Special  Sympathy ! 

Such  laws  no  doubt  were  simply  echoes  of  clerical  teachings. 
"The  girl,"  says  St.  Ambrose  of  Rebecca,  whom  he  holds  up 
herein  as  an  example,  "  is  not  consulted  about  her  espousals,  for 
she  awaits  the  judgment  of  her  parents;  inasmuch  as  a  girl's 
modesty  will  not  allow  her  to  choose  a  husband "  (!).  Irish 
"  bulls "  appear  to  have  crept  even  into  ecclesiastic  enactments, 
for  we  read  in  Smith's  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities  that 
"An  Irish  council  in  the  time  of  St.  Patrick,  about  the  year  450 
lays  it  down  that  the  will  of  the  girl  is  to  be  inquired  of  the 
father,  and  that  the  girl  is  to  do  what  her  father  chooses,  inas- 


96  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

much  as  man  is  the  head  of  the  woman."  "  Even  widows,"  we 
read  further,  "  under  the  age  of  twenty-five  were  forbidden  by  a 
law  of  Valentinian  and  Gratian  to  marry  without  their  parents' 
consent ;  and  St.  Ambrose  desires  young  widows  to  leave  the 
choice  of  their  second  husbands  to  their  parents." 

Compayre"  states  in  his  History  of  Pedagogy  that  in  the 
seventeenth  century  "  woman  was  still  regarded  as  the  inferior  of 
man,  in  the  lower  classes  as  a  drudge,  in  the  higher  as  an  orna- 
ment. In  her  case  intellectual  culture  was  regarded  as  either 
useless  or  dangerous ;  and  the  education  that  was  given  her  was 
to  fit  her  for  a  life  of  devotion  or  a  life  of  seclusion  from  society." 

Still  more,  of  course,  was  this  the  case  in  the  times  of  St. 
Jerome,  who  in  his  letter  to  Lseta  on  the  education  of  her 
daughter  Paula,  tells  her  that  the  girl  must  never  eat  in  public, 
or  eat  meat.  "Never  let  Paula  listen  to  musical  instruments." 
Even  her  affections  must  be  suppressed — all  except  the  devotional 
sentiments.  She  must  not  be  "in  the  gatherings  and  in  the 
company  of  her  kindred ;  let  her  be  found  only  in  retirement." 
"Do  not  allow  Paula  to  feel  more  atiection  for  one  of  her 
companions  than  for  others."  And  this  ascetic  moralist  even 
recommends  uncleanliness  as  a  virtue  :  "  I  entirely  forbid  a  young 
girl  to  bathe ; "  which  may  be  matched  with  the  following,  also 
cited  from  Compayre' :  "  The  first  preceptors  of  Gargantua  said 
that  it  sufficed  to  comb  one's  hair  with  the  four  fingers  and  the 
thumb ;  and  that  whoever  combed,  washed,  and  cleansed  himself 
otherwise  was  losing  his  time  in  this  world." 

In  such  a  rough  atmosphere  of  masculine  ignorance,  fanaticism, 
and  cruelty  the  feminine  virtues  of  sympathy,  tenderness,  grace, 
and  sweetness  could  not  have  flourished  very  luxuriantly.  Conse- 
quently there  is  doubtless  more  than  a  grain  of  truth  in  mediaeval 
proverbs  about  women,  cynical  and  brutal  as  some  of  them  are. 
Here  are  a  few  specimens : — 

"  Women  and  horses  must  be  beaten." 

"  Women  and  money  are  the  cause  of  all  evil  in  the  world." 

"  Women  only  keep  those  secrets  which  they  don't  know." 

"  Trust  no  woman,  and  were  she  dead." 

"  Between  a  woman's  yes  and  no  there  isn't  room  for  the  point 
of  a  needle." 

"  If  you  are  too  happy,  take  a  wife." 

When  we  read  that  "  Montaigne  is  of  that  number,  who, 
through  false  gallantry,  would  keep  woman  in  a  state  of  ignorance, 
on  the  pretext  that  instruction  would  mar  her  natural  charms  ; " 
and  that  the  same  author  recommends  poetry  to  women,  because 


MEDIJEVAL  LOVE  07 

it  is  "a  wanton,  crafty  art,  disguised,  all  for  pleasure,  all  for 
show,  just  as  they  are";  we  recall  with  a  smile  John  Stuart 
Mill's  sarcastic  reference  to  the  time,  "Some  generations  ago, 
when  satires  on  women  were  in  vogue,  and  men  thought  it  a 
clever  thing  to  insult  women  for  being  what  men  made  them." 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   LOVE 

Christianity  claims  to  be  pre-eminently  the  religion  of  love, 
in  the  widest  sense  of  that  term,  including,  especially,  religious 
veneration  of  a  personal  Deity  and  love  of  one's  enemy.  It  has 
been  asserted  by  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton  and  others  that 
Christianity  has  done  little  or  nothing  in  aid  of  woman's  elevation; 
and  it  cannot  be  denied  that  much  good  would  have  resulted  if 
more  emphasis  had  been  placed  by  the  Apostles  on  certain  phases 
of  the  domestic  relations.  That  Romantic  Love  is  not  alluded  to 
in  the  New  Testament  need  not  cause  any  surprise,  for  that 
sentiment  cannot  have  existed  in  those  days  when  Courtship  and 
Individual  Choice  were  unknown.  But  there  are  passages  in  St. 
Paul's  writings  which  were  probably  the  seeds  from  which  grew 
the  mediaeval  contempt  for  marriage  and  women.  And  although 
marriage  is  now  zealously  guarded  by  the  Church,  Love  of  the 
romantic  sort  is  no  doubt  looked  upon  even  to-day  by  many  an 
austere  clergyman  as  a  harmless  youthful  epidemic — a  sort  of 
emotional  measles — rather  than  as  a  new  sesthetico-inoral  senti- 
ment destined  to  become  the  strongest  of  all  agencies  working 
for  the  improvement  of  the  personal  appearance,  social  condition, 
and  happiness  of  mankind. 

On  the  other  hand,  even  agnostics  must  admit  on  reflection 
that  Christianity  contained  elements  which,  despite  the  vicious 
fanaticism  of  many  of  its  early  teachers,  slowly  helped  to 
ameliorate  woman's  lot.  In  the  first  place,  Protestantism,  as 
embodied  in  Luther,  performed  an  invaluable  service  by  restoring 
and  enforcing  universal  respect  for  the  marriage-tie.  He  set  a 
good  example  by  not  only  defying  the  degrading  custom  of  obliga- 
tory celibacy,  but  by  marrying  a  most  sensible  woman — a  nun 
who  had  escaped  with  eight  others  from  a  convent  at  Nimtsch. 

Mariolatry,  or  the  cult  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  is  the  second 
avenue  through  which  Christianity  influenced  the  development  of 
the  tender  emotions.  The  halo  of  sanctity  which  it  spread  at  the 
same  time  over  virginity  and  motherhood  has  been  of  incalculable 
value  in  raising  woman  in  the  estimation  of  the  masses. 

A  third  way  in  which  Christianity  influenced  woman's  position 

H 


98  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

is  suggested  by  the  following  remarks  of  Mr.  Lecky,  who  has 
done  valuable  service  to  philosophy,  in  showing  how  emotions  as 
well  as  ideas  change  with  time :  "  In  antiquity,"  he  says,  "  the 
virtues  that  were  most  admired  were  almost  exclusively  those 
which  were  distinctively  masculine.  Courage,  self-assertion,  mag- 
nanimity, and,  above  all,  patriotism,  were  the  leading  features  of 
the  ideal  type ;  and  chastity,  modesty,  and  charity,  the  gentler  and 
the  domestic  virtues,  which  are  especially  feminine,  were  greatly 
undervalued.  With  the  single  exception  of  conjugal  fidelity,  none 
of  the  virtues  that  were  highly  prized  were  virtues  distinctively  or 
pre-eminently  feminine."  Now  the  "  religion  of  love,"  by  especially 
insisting  on  these  "feminine  virtues,"  became  a  powerful  agent 
in  undermining  the  coarse  mediaeval  spirit  with  its  masculine, 
military  "  virtues,"  alias  barbarisms. 

CHIVALRY — MILITANT  AND   COMIC 

In  the  howling  wilderness  of  mediaeval  masculine  brutality  and 
feminine  degradation  there  was  one  sunny  oasis  in  which  the 
flowers  of  Love  were  allowed  to  grow  undisturbed  for  a  few  genera- 
tions,— until  military  ambition  trod  them  again  underfoot.  This 
brief  episode  of  gentler  manners  is  known  as  the  period  of 
Chivalry. 

Ever  since  the  fifth  century  the  worship  of  the  Virgin  Mary 
had  increased  in  ardour,  and  it  was  to  be  expected  that  at  some 
favourable  moment  this  adoration  would  be  extended  to  the  whole 
female  sex,  or  at  least  its  nobler  representatives.  This  was  the 
mission  taken  upon  themselves  by  the  knights  and  poets  of 
chivalrous  times. 

Chivalry,  it  is  true,  was  so  often  a  mixture  of  clownishness  and 
licentiousness,  its  practice  was  so  much  less  refined  than  its  theory, 
that  in  opposition  to  those  historians  who  have  sung  its  praises 
others  have  doubted  whether  its  influence  was  on  the  whole  for 
good  or  for  evil.  For,  although  the  knights  vowed  especially  to 
protect  widows  and  orphans,  and  respect  and  honour  ladies,  yet  it 
was  precisely  under  their  regime  that,  when  cities  were  taken 
and  castles  stormed,  women  were  subjected  to  the  most  brutal 
treatment. 

The  difficulty  is  best  solved  by  distinguishing  between  two 
kinds  of  Chivalry — the  Militant  and  the  Poetic.  The  militant 
type  of  knight-errantry  was  less  inspired  by  the  desire  to  benefit 
womankind  than  by  ambition  to  gratify  silly  masculine  vanity.  So 
thoroughly  was  the  mediaeval  mind  imbued  with  ideas  of  war  that 


MEDIEVAL  LOVE  99 

these  knights  could  not  conceive  even  of  love  except  in  a  military 
guise.  So  they  rode  about  the  country  in  quest  of  adventure, 
ostensibly  in  the  service  of  an  adored  mistress,  but  really  to  find 
an  outlet,  in  times  of  peace,  for  pent-up  military  energy  and 
ambition. 

Spain  and  Southern  France  were  the  principal  home  of  Chivalry 
Militant,  because  there  a  warm  climate  and  smiling  nature  offered 
most  favourable  conditions  to  wandering  knights  in  quest  of 
adventure.  Fortunately  the  world  possesses,  in  Don  Quixote,  a 
lifelike  picture  of  knight-errantry;  for  although  the  aim  of  Cer- 
vantes was  to  make  fun,  not  so  much  of  Chivalry  as  of  trashy 
contemporaneous  romances  of  Chivalry,  yet  in  doing  this  he  could 
not  avoid  depicting  the  comic  side  of  the  institution  itself,  concern- 
ing which  it  is  indeed  difficile  satiram  non  scribere. 

It  appears  to  have  been  the  custom  of  these  knights  to  wander 
about  the  country  interfering  in  every  quarrel,  and,  in  default  of  a 
disturbance,  creating  one. 

Each  knight  had  a  Dulcinea,  whom  he  had  perhaps  never  seen, 
but  in  whose  honour  and  for  whose  love  he  engages  in  all  these 
combats.  And  whenever  he  meets  another  knight  he  forthwith 
challenges  him  to  admit  that  this  Dulcinea,  whom  the  other  has 
of  course  never  seen,  is  the  most  beautiful  lady  in  the  world.  The 
other  knight  echoes  the  challenge  in  behalf  of  his  Dulcinea ;  and 
the  result  is  a  combat  in  which  the  victor,  by  the  inexorable 
logic  of  superior  strength,  proves  the  superior  beauty  of  his  chosen 
lady-love. 

The  vanquished  knight  is  then  sent  as  prisoner  to  the  victor's 
mistress  with  a  message  of  love. 

The  Germans  do  not  often  originate  anything;  but  if  they 
take  up  an  idea  or  institution  they  work  it  more  thoroughly 
than  any  other  nation.  So  with  the  fantastic  side  of  Chivalry, 
which  was  introduced  after  the  second  crusade,  during  which 
German  knights  had  come  into  close  contact  with  French  knights. 

"  Spain,"  says  Professor  Scherr,  "  has  imagined  a  Don  Quixote, 
but  Germany  has  really  produced  one." 

His  name  was  Ulrich  von  Lichtenstein,  and  he  was  born  in  the 
year  1 200.  "  From  his  boyhood,  Herr  Ulrich's  thoughts  were 
directed  towards  woman-worship,  and  as  a  youth  he  chose  a  high- 
born and,  be  it  well  understood,  a  married  lady  as  his  patroness, 
in  whose  service  he  infused  method  into  his  knightly  madness. 
The  circumstance  that  meanwhile  he  himself  gets  married  does  not 
abate  his  folly.  He  greedily  drinks  water  in  which  his  patroness 
has  washed  herself ;  he  has  an  operation  performed  on  his  thick 


100  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

double  underlip,  because  she  informs  him  that  it  is  not  inviting  for 
kisses ;  he  amputates  one  of  his  fingers  which  had  become  stiff  in 
an  encounter,  and  sends  it  to  his  mistress  as  a  proof  of  his  capacity 
of  endurance  for  her  sake.  Masked  as  Frau  Venus,  he  wanders 
about  the  country  and  engages  in  encounters,  in  this  costume,  in 
honour  of  his  mistress ;  at  her  command  he  goes  among  the  lepers 
and  eats  with  them  from  one  bowl.  .  .  .  The  most  remarkable 
circumstance,  however,  is  that  Ulrich's  own  spouse,  while  her 
husband  and  master  masquerades  about  the  land  as  a  knight  in 
his  beloved's  service,  remains  aside  in  his  castle,  and  is  only  men- 
tioned (in  his  poetic  autobiography)  whenever  he  returns  home, 
tired  and  dilapidated,  to  be  restored  by  her  nursing." 

When  a  German  knight  had  chosen  a  Dukinea,  he  adopted  and 
wore  her  colour,  for  he  was  now  her  love-servant,  and  stood  to  his 
mistress  in  the  same  relation  as  a  vassal  to  his  master.  <;  The  be- 
loved," Scherr  continues,  k:  gave  her  lover  a  love-token — a  girdle 
or  veil,  a  ribbon,  or  even  a  sleeve  of  her  dress;  this  token  he 
fastened  to  his  helmet  or  shield,  and  great  was  the  lady's  pride  if 
he  brought  it  back  to  her  from  battle  thoroughly  cut  and  hewn  to 
pieces.  Thus  (in  Parzival)  Gawan  had  fastened  on  his  shield 
a  sleeve  of  the  beautiful  Olibet,  arid  when  he  returned  it  to  her, 
torn  and  speared,  'Da  ward  des  Magdlein's  Freude  gross;  ihr 
blanker  Arm  war  noch  bloss,  dartiber  schob  sie  ihn  zuhand.' " 

The  attitude  of  the  knight-errants  may  be  briefly  described  as 
Gallantry  gone  mad.  We  have  seen  that  a  few  traces  of  Gallantry 
are  found  in  the  pages  of  Ovid ;  but  it  was  during  the  age  of 
Chivalry  that  this  overtone  of  Love  made  itself  heard  for  the  first 
time  distinctly  and  loudly.  And  as,  when  a  new  popular  melody 
appears,  everybody  takes  it  up  and  sings  and  whistles  it  ad  nau- 
seam ;  so  these  knights,  intoxicated  with  the  novel  idea  of  gallant 
behaviour  toward  women,  took  it  up  and  carried  it  to  the  most 
ridiculous  extremes. 

The  women,  naturally  enough,  unused  to  such  devotion,  became 
as  extravagantly  coy  as  the  men  were  gallant.  They  subjected 
this  Gallantry  to  the  most  absurd  and  even  cruel  tests.  The 
knights  were  sent  to  war,  to  the  crusades,  into  the  dens  of  wild 
animals,  to  test  their  devotion;  and  few  were  so  manly  as  the 
knight  in  Schiller's  ballad,  who,  after  fetching  his  lady's  glove  from 
the  lion's  den,  threw  it  in  her  face,  instead  of  accepting  her  willing 
favours. 

It  is  with  reference  to  these  coy  and  cruel  tests  of  Gallantry 
that  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach  bitterly  accuses  Love  of  having 
caused  the  death  of  many  a  noble  knight. 


MEDIAEVAL  LOVE  101 

Yet,  despite  these  absurdities,  the  trials  and  procrastinations  to 
which  the  knights  were  subjected  had  one  good  result:  they  helped 
to  give  Love  a  supersensual,  imaginative  basis.  This  fact  is  brought 
out  clearly  in  the  following  statement  made  by  Dr.  Botticherin  his 
learned  work  on  Parzival.  When,  he  says,  after  the  middle  of  the 
twelfth  century,  the  Troubadour  love-poetry  became  known  in 
Austria,  "  it  was  especially  the  idea  of  Minuedienst  (love-service) 
that  was  seized  upon  with  avidity :  the  knight  wooes  and  labours 
for  a  woman's  love,  but  she  holds  back  and  grants  no  favours  until 
after  a  long  trial-service.  The  final  object  of  this  service,  the 
possession  of  the  beloved,  is  regarded  as  quite  subordinate  to  the 
pangs  and  pleasures  of  wooing  and  ivaiting." 

Here  was  a  novelty  in  Love,  indeed !  And,  as  good  luck 
would  have  it,  fashion  lent  its  powerful  aid  to  the  innovation. 
The  sentiment  was  that  "  Whoever  is  not  in  the  service  of  love  is 
unworthy  to  be  a  courtier " ;  and  thus  many  a  boor  who  would 
have  very  much  preferred  to  continue  treating  women  as  servants, 
had  to  put  his  head  into  the  yoke  of  Gallantry,  in  order  to  be 
"  fashionable.7' 

CHIVALKY — POETIC 

If  these  knights  of  Chivalry  bestrode  their  warlike  Rosinantes 
to  show  an  astonished  world  for  the  first  time  what  could  be  done 
in  the  way  of  Gallantry,  the  peaceful  poets  of  Chivalry — the 
Troubadours  and  Minnesingers — in  turn  mounted  their  winged 
Pegasus,  and  soared  for  the  first  time  to  the  dizzy  heights  of 
Ecstatic  Adoration  or  Emotional  Hyperbole. 

"Woman  was  regarded,"  says  Mr.  Symonds,  "as  an  ideal 
being,  to  be  approached  with  worship  bordering  on  adoration. 
The  lover  derived  personal  force,  virtue,  elevation,  energy  from 
his  enthusiastic  passion.  Honour,  justice,  courage,  self-sacrifice, 
contempt  of  worldly  goods  flowed  from  that  one  sentiment,  and 
love  united  two  wills  in  a  single  ecstasy.  Love  was  the  consum- 
mation of  spiritual  felicity,  which  surpassed  all  other  modes 
of  happiness  in  its  beatitude.  Thus,  Bernard  de  Ventadour 
and  Jacopo  da  Lentino  were  ready  to  forego  Paradise,  unless  they 
might  behold  their  lady's  face  before  the  throne  of  God.  For  a 
certain  period  in  modern  history  this  mysticism  of  the  amorous 
emotion  was  no  affectation.  It  formulated  a  genuine  impulse  of 
manly  hearts,  influenced  by  beauty,  and  touched  with  the  sense 
of  moral  superiority  in  woman,  perfected  through  weakness,  and 
demanding  physical  protection.  By  bringing  the  tender  passions 
into  accord  with  gentle  manners  and  unselfish  aspirations,  it 


102  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

served  to  temper  the  rudeness  of  primitive  society ;  and  no  little 
of  its  attraction  was  due  to  the  conviction  that  only  refined 
natures  could  experience  it.  This  new  aspect  of  love  was  due  to 
chivalry,  to  Christianity,  to  the  Teutonic  reverence  for  woman,  in 
which  religious  awe  seems  to  have  blended  with  the  service  of 
the  weaker  by  the  stronger." 

These  remarks,  though  applicable  to  Chivalrous  poetry  in 
general,  refer  especially  to  the  Italian  species.  The  most  im- 
portant varieties  of  Chivalrous  poetry,  however,  are  those  of  the 
Provengal,  or  French,  Troubadours,  and  the  German  Minnesingers. 
These  must  be  briefly  considered  in  turn,  as  they  present  national 
differences  of  importance  to  the  history  and  psychology  of  Love. 

(a)  French  Troubadours. — As  we  live  in  a  period  in  which 
the  newspaper  has  become  the  greatest  of  moral  forces,  we  can 
most  easily  realise  the  social  influence  of  the  Troubadours  on 
reading,  in  Thieriy,  that  "  In  the  twelfth  century  the  songs  of  the 
troubadours,  circulating  rapidly  from  castle  to  castle,  and  from 
town  to  town,  supplied  the  place  of  periodical  gazettes  in  all  the 
country  between  the  rivers  Isere  and  Vienne,  the  mountains  of 
Auvergne  and  the  two  seas." 

The  wandering  minstrels  who  wielded  this  poetic  power  were 
recruited  from  all  classes — nobility,  artisans,  and  clergy.  But,  as 
Dr.  F.  Huefler  remarks  in  his  entertaining  work  on  Provengal 
life  and  poetry,  "  By  far  the  largest  number  of  the  Troubadours 
known  to  us — fifty-seven  in  number — belong  to  the  nobility,  not 
to  the  highest  nobility  in  most  cases,  it  is  true.  In  several  in- 
stances, poverty  is  distinctly  mentioned  as  the  cause  for  adopting 
the  profession  of  a  troubadour.  It  almost  appears,  indeed,  as  if 
this  profession,  like  that  of  the  churchman,  and  sometimes  in 
connection  with  it,  had  been  regarded  by  Provencal  families  as  a 
convenient  mode  of  providing  for  their  younger  sons." 

In  a  time  when  distinctions  of  rank  were  so  closely  observed, 
it  was  perhaps  of  special  importance  that  these  singers  should  be 
chiefly  persons  of  noble  blood.  Women,  it  is  true,  have  at  all 
times  shown  a  disposition  to  ignore  rank  in  favour  of  bards  and 
tenors  ;  but  the  medieval  nobles  might  have  hesitated,  frequently, 
to  extend  to  commoners  the  unlimited  hospitality  of  their  castles, 
and  the  privilege  of  adoring  their  wives  in  verse  and  action. 
These  husbands,  in  fact,  appear  to  have  shown  remarkable  for- 
bearance towards  their  poetic  guests.  No  doubt  it  flattered  their 
vanity  (overtone  of  Pride)  to  have  the  charms  of  their  spouse 
sung  by  a  famous  poet  in  person;  and  on  account  of  the  social 
influence  wielded  by  the  Troubadours,  owing  to  their  successive 


MEDIEVAL  LOVE  103 

appearance  at  all  the  castles  in  the  land,  it  was,  moreover,  wise 
not  to  forfeit  their  goodwill  Sometimes,  however,  Jealousy  held 
high  carnival,  as,  in  the  case  of  Guillem,  the  hero  of  Hueffer  and 
Mackenzie's  opera,  The  Troubadour,  who  was  murdered  by  the 
injured  husband,  and  the  faithless  wife  compelled  to  drink  of  the 
wine  called  "  the  poet's  blood,"  adulterated  in  a  horribly  realistic 
manner.  The  women,  likewise,  were  frequently  moved  by  Jealousy 
— not  in  behalf  of  their  husbands  but  of  the  Troubadours,  of 
whose  art  and  adoration  they  desired  a  Monopoly,  whereas  these 
bards  were  very  apt  to  transfer  their  fickle  affections  to  other 
women. 

Fickleness,  however,  was  not  the  greatest  fault  of  these  Trou- 
badours. Their  great  moral  shortcoming  was  that  they  paid  no 
attention  to  the  borderline  between  conjugal  and  romantic  love. 
Dr.  Hueffer  does  not  recollect  a  single  instance  amongst  the 
numerous  love-stories  told  in  connection  with  the  Troubadours,  in 
which  the  object  of  passion  was  not  a  married  lady — a  strange 
point  of  affinity  with  the  modern  French  novel  to  which  he  calls 
the  attention  of  those  interested  in  national  psychology.  A  case 
in  point  is  that  of  Guirant  (1260),  one  of  whose  pastorals  is 
analysed  by  Hueffer :  "  The  idea  is  simple  enough :  an  amorous 
knight,  whose  importunate  offers  to  an  unprotected  girl  are  kept 
in  check  by  mere  dint  of  graceful,  witty,  sometimes  tart  reply." 
These  offers  of  love  are  repeated  at  intervals  of  two,  three,  seven, 
and  six  years,  and  finally  transferred  to  the  woman's  daughter, 
always  with  the  same  bad  luck.  His  own  wife,  meanwhile,  is 
never  considered  a  proper  object  for  his  poetic  effusions.  Con- 
cerning the  German  imitator  of  foreign  customs — Ulrich  von 
Lichtenstein,  mentioned  a  few  pages  back — we  have  likewise  seen 
that  his  wife  never  entered  his  mind  except  when  he  came  home 
"  tired  and  dilapidated,  to  be  restored  by  her  nursing." 

Besides  pastorals  of  the  kind  just  referred  to,  the  Troubadours 
had  several  other  classes  of  songs,  among  them  the  tensons,  or 
contentions  which  were  "  metrical  dialogues  of  lively  repartee  on 
some  disputed  points  of  gallantry."  These  may  have  given 
ground  for  the  myth  that  aristocratic  ladies  of  this  period  "  insti- 
tuted Courts  of  Love,  in  which  questions  of  gallantry  were  gravely 
discussed  and  determined  by  their  suffrages,"  as,  e..g,  whether  a 
husband  could  really  love  his  wife.  The  question  whether  any 
such  debating  clubs  for  considering  the  ethics  and  etiquette  of 
love  existed  is  still  debated  by  scholars;  but  the  best  evidence 
appears  to  be  negative. 

(b)  German  Minnesingers. — The  German  wandering  minstrels 


104  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

also  belonged  mainly  to  the  aristocracy,  and  imitated  their  French 
colleagues  in  paying  their  addresses  chiefly  to  married  women — a 
fact  for  which,  in  both  cases,  the  rigid  chaperonage  of  the  young 
must  be  held  responsible ;  for  man  will  make  love,  and  if  not 
allowed  to  do  so  properly  he  will  do  it  improperly.  Yet  on  the 
whole  the  Minnesingers,  at  least  in  their  verse,  were  less  amorous 
than  the  Troubadours.  As  Mr.  L.  C.  Elson  remarks  in  his 
History  of  German  Song :  "  The  Troubadour  praised  the  eyes, 
the  hair,  the  lips,  the  form  of  his  chosen  one ;  the  Minnesinger 
praised  the  sweetness,  the  grace,  the  modesty,  the  tenderness  of 
the  entire  sex.  The  one  was  concrete,  the  other  abstract." 

Abstractness,  however,  is  not  a  desirable  quality  in  poetry,  the 
very  essence  of  which  is  concrete  imagery.  Accordingly  we  find 
that  with  few  exceptions  the  German  Minnesingers  are  not  as 
poets  equal  to  their  French  prototypes.  It  was  Schiller  himself 
who  passed  the  severest  judgment  on  these  early  colleagues  of  his. 
"If  the  sparrows  on  the  roof,"  he  once  remarked  to  a  friend, 
"  should  ever  undertake  to  write,  or  to  issue  an  almanac  of  love 
and  friendship,  I  would  wager  ten  to  one  it  would  be  just  like 
these  songs  of  love.  What  a  poverty  of  ideas  in  these  songs  ! 
A  garden,  a  tree,  a  hedge,  a  forest,  and  a  sweetheart — these  are 
about  all  the  objects  that  are  to  be  found  in  a  sparrow's  head. 
Then  we  have  flowers  which  are  fragrant,  fruits  which  grow 
mellow,  twigs  on  which  a  bird  sits  in  the  sunshine  and  sings,  and 
spring  which  comes,  and  winter  which  goes,  and  nothing  that 
remains  except — ennui" 

Schiller's  criticism,  however,  is  too  sweeping,  for  there  were 
notable  exceptions  to  these  sparrow-poets,  concerning  one  of  whom, 
Hadlaub,  the  late  Professor  Scherer  gives  the  following  fascinating 
information  in  his  History  of  German  Literature:  "He  introduces 
human  figures  into  his  descriptions  of  scenery,  aiid  shows  us,  for 
instance,  in  the  summer  a  group  of  beautiful  ladies  walking  in  an 
orchard,  and  blushing  with  womanly  modesty  when  gazed  at  by 
young  men.  He  compares  the  troubles  of  love  with  the  troubles 
of  hard-working  men,  like  charcoal-burners  and  carters. 

"  Hadlaub  tells  us  more  of  his  personal  experiences  than  any 
other  Minnesinger.  Even  as  a  child,  we  learn,  he  had  loved  a 
little  girl,  who,  however,  would  have  nothing  to  say  to  him,  but 
continually  flouted  him,  to  his  great  distress.  Once  she  bit  his 
hand,  but  her  bite,  he  says,  was  so  tender,  womanly,  and  gentle, 
that  he  was  sorry  the  feeling  of  it  passed  away  so  soon.  Another 
time,  being  urged  to  give  him  a  keepsake,  she  threw  her  needle- 
case  at  him,  and  he  seized  it  with  sweet  eagerness,  but  it  was 


MEDIAEVAL  LOVE  105 

taken  from  him  and  returned  to  her,  and  she  was  made  to  give  it 
him  in  a  friendly  manner.  In  later  years  his  pains  still  remained 
unrewarded ;  when  his  lady  perceived  him,  she  would  get  up  and 
go  away.  Once,  he  tells  us,  he  saw  her  fondling  and  kissing  a 
child,  and  when  she  had  gone  he  drew  the  child  towards  him  and 
embraced  it  as  she  had  embraced  it,  and  kissed  it  in  the  place 
where  she  had  kissed  it." 

The  gradual  change  in  woman's  position,  social  and  amorous,  is 
indicated  by  the  differences  between  the  earlier  and  the  later 
Minnesongs.  In  the  early  poems  Professor  Scherer  remarks,  "  The 
social  supremacy  of  noble  woman  is  not  yet  recognised,  and  the 
man  wooes  with  proud  self-respect.  .  .  .  Another  refuses  himself 
to  a  woman  who  desired  his  love.  ...  A  fourth  boasts  of  his 
triumphs.  *  Women,'  says  he,  'are  as  easily  tamed  as  falcons.' 
In  another  song  a  woman  tells  how  she  tamed  a  falcon,  but  he 
flew  away  from  her,  and  now  wears  other  chains.  .  .  . 

"  In  the  later  Minnesongs  it  is  the  women  who  are  proud,  and 
the  men  who  must  languish" 

A  still  more  remarkable  change  is  noticed  in  the  German  Folk- 
songs M  hich  followed  the  periods  of  Minnesong  proper.  "  The 
women  of  these  popular  love-songs  are  not  mostly  married  women; 
they  are,  as  a  rule,  young  maidens"  [at  last,  pure  Romantic  Love!] 
"  who  are  not  only  praised  but  also  turned  to  ridicule  and  blamed. 
The  woes  of  love  do  not  here  arise  from  the  capricious  coyness  of 
the  fair  one,  but  are  called  forth  by  parting,  jealousy,  or  faithless- 
ness. Feeling  is  stronger  than  in  the  Minnesong,  and  seeks 
accordingly  for  stronger  modes  of  expression." 

It  is.  not  a  mere  accident  that  true  Romantic  Love  should  have 
first  appeared  in  these  Folk-songs.  For  these  were  the  products 
of  gifted  individuals  in  the  lower  classes,  where  chaperonage — 
arch  enemy  of  Love — was  less  strict  than  among  the  higher  classes. 


FEMALE   CULTURE 

That  the  women  were  not  ungrateful  to  the  mediaeval  bards 
who  first  discovered  in  them  the  possibilities  of  higher  charms  and 
virtues,  is  shown  by  their  treatment  of  Heinrich  von  Meissen, 
Minnesinger,  who  was  called  Frauenlob,  because  he  constantly 
sang  the  "praise  of  woman."  When  he  died  at  Mainz  in  1317 
they  carried  his  bier  to  church  with  their  own  hands,  and  then,  in 
accordance  with  the  custom  of  the  time,  poured  libations  of  wine 
on  his  bier  so  freely  that  the  whole  floor  of  the  church  was  covered. 

And   there   is   every  reason   to   believe   that   the  women   of 


106  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Frauenlob's  period  deserved  his  praises,  because  they  were  in 
aesthetic,  moral,  and  intellectual  culture  far  superior  to  the  women 
before  or  directly  after  their  time.  We  read  in  Gottfried  von 
Strassburg's  poem  how  Tristan,  while  Isolde  healed  his  wound, 
instructed  her  in  the  arts  and  manners  of  court  life.  Isolde  knew 
French  and  Latin  besides  her  own  language.  She  played  the 
violin  and  the  harp,  and  sang ;  she  wrote  letters  and  poems,  and 
would  indeed  have  been  a  model  of  culture  even  at  the  present  day. 
The  twelfth  century  even  had  a  genuine  blue-stocking,  the  nun 
Herrad  von  Landsberg,  who  wrote  a  cyclopaedia  of  all  human 
knowledge,  in  the  Latin  tongue,  called  the  Hortus  Delhiarum. 
Learning  throughout  the  mediaeval  ages  was  all  concentrated  in  the 
monasteries ;  but  at  the  period  in  question  the  monks  did  not 
retain  everything  for  themselves,  but  aided  the  knights  and  the 
poets  in  instructing  the  women  of  the  court  and  nobility. 

Nor  did  these  women  neglect  their  domestic  affairs  or  physical 
exercise.  They  accompanied  the  men  on  their  falcon-hunting 
parties,  and  at  home  learned  to  spin,  weave,  sew,  and  make  clothing 
for  themselves  and  their  husbands  and  children.  At  the  tourna- 
ments and  other  games  they  appeared  as  Queens  of  Beauty  to 
distribute  prizes  and  inspire  their  admirers  to  heroic  deeds ;  and 
at  banquets  and  other  social  gatherings  they  seem  to  have  sup- 
plied more  of  the  wit  and  entertainment  than  the  men,  whose  mili- 
tary occupations  left  them  less  time  for  the  cultivation  of  the  arts. 

At  the  same  time  one  cannot  help  smiling  at  the  elementary 
rules  of  conduct  which  had  to  be  given  even  to  women  of  the 
nobility.  You  must  not  stare  at  a  man  long,  or  refuse  to  return 
his  salutation,  young  ladies  were  told ;  nor  must  you  in  walking 
take  too  long  or  too  short  steps.  A  poet  of  the  middle  of  the 
thirteenth  century  (quoted  by  Mr.  Hueffer)  gives  this  advice  to  a 
girl :  "  If  a  gentleman  takes  you  aside  and  wishes  to  talk  of  court- 
ship to  you,  do  not  show  a  strange  or  sullen  behaviour,  but  defend 
yourself  with  pleasant  and  pretty  repartees.  And  if  his  talk  annoys 
you  and  makes  you  uneasy,  I  advise  you  to  ask  him  questions," 
and  contradict  his  statements,  in  order  "  to  give  a  harmless  turn 
to  the  conversation." 

Like  Greek  and  Roman  civilisation,  like  the  palmy  days  of 
Persian  and  Arabian  culture,  this  mediaeval  period  of  feminine 
ascendancy  and  refinement  unfortunately  did  not  last  many  gen- 
erations. Although,  undoubtedly,  chivalry  accomplished  real  good 
for  the  time  being,  most  of  what  went  by  i-hat  name  was,  after 
all,  too  much  of  a  sham — less  a  matter  of  actuality  than  of  poetic 
fancy.  "  Sincere  and  beautiful  as  the  chivalrous  ideal  may  have 


MEDIAEVAL  LOVE  107 

been,"  says  Mr.  Syraonds,  "it  speedily  degenerated.  Chivalry, 
though  a  vital  element  of  feudalism,  existed,  even  among  the 
nations  of  its  origin,  more  as  an  aspiration  than  a  reality.  In 
Italy  it  never  penetrated  the  life  or  subdued  the  imagination  of 
the  people.  For  the  Italo-Provencal  poets  that  code  of  love  was 
almost  wholly  formal."  Petrarch,  like  Alberti  and  Boccaccio, 
indulges  again  in  abuse  of  women  as  coarse  and  brutal  as  that  of 
the  early  "Christian  Fathers";  and  when  we  come  to  the  sixteenth 
century,  the  scholar  Cornelius  Agrippa  complains  of  the  old  state 
of  affairs — woman's  complete  subjection  :  "  Unjust  laws,"  he  says, 
"  do  their  worst  to  repress  women ;  custom  and  education  combine 
to  make  them  nonentities.  From  her  childhood  a  girl  is  brought 
up  in  idleness  at  home,  and  confined  to  needle  and  thread  for  sole 
employment.  When  she  reaches  marriageable  years,  she  has  this 
alternative :  the  jealousy  of  a  husband,  or  the  custody  of  a  convent. 
All  public  duties,  all  legal  functions,  all  active  ministrations  of 
religion  are  closed  against  her." 

The  manner  in  which  a  great  English  poet,  much  later  still, 
treated  the  women  of  his  household  was  quite  in  consonance  with 
the  customs  of  preceding  times.  As  an  English  author  wrote,  forty 
years  ago,  "  Milton  taught  his  daughters  to  pronounce  Greek  and 
Latin,  so  that  they  might  read  the  classics  aloud  for  his  pleasure, 
but  forbade  their  understanding  the  meaning  of  a  word  for  their 
own — for  which  he  deserved  to  be  blind." 

Regarding  France  we  read  in  Compayre'  that  "  Even  in  the 
higher  classes,  woman  held  herself  aloof  from  instruction,  and  from 
things  intellectual.  Madame  Racine  had  never  seen  played,  and 
had  probably  never  read,  the  tragedies  of  her  husband."  Mine,  de 
Lambert  "reproaches  Moliere  for  having  excluded  women  from 
recreation,  pastime,  and  pleasure."  Fe'nelon  advised  girls  to  learn 
to  read  and  write  correctly  and  to  learn  grammar,  which  "surpassed 
in  the  time  of  Fe'nelon  the  received  custom."  "  No  one  knew 
better  than  Fe'nelon  the  faults  that  come  to  woman  through 
ignorance — unrest,  unemployed  time,  inability  to  apply  herself  to 
solid  and  serious  duties,  frivolity,  indolence,  lawless  imagination, 
indiscreet  curiosity  concerning  trifles,  levity,  and  talkativeness, 
sentimentalism,  and  ...  a  mania  for  theology:  women  are  too 
much  inclined  to  speak  decisively  on  religious  questions." 

PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Rarer  even  than  feminine  culture,  Personal  Beauty  appears  to 
have  been  throughout  the  Middle  Ages.  Most  of  the  portraits  of 


108  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

women  and  men,  as  well  as  the  ideal  heads  and  figures  in  paintings 
and  sculpture,  are  repulsively  ugly  and  inexpressive  of  higher  traits. 
The  general  causes  of  mediaeval  ugliness — neglect  of  personal 
hygiene  and  sanitary  measures,  hard  manual  labour,  prevention 
of  love-matches,  etc. — will  be  considered  elsewhere.  In  this  place 
only  one  cause  need  be  alluded  to.  The  old  Church  Fathers,  it  is 
well  known,  were  not  only  unsesthetic  but  positively  anti-aesthetic. 
Everything  pleasing  to  the  senses  was  denounced  by  them,  espe- 
cially the  physical  beauty  of  women,  which  they  looked  upon  as  a 
special  gift  of  the  devil.  Such  an  attitude  on  the  part  of  the 
leading  social  class  could  hardly  tend  to  encourage  the  cultivation 
of  personal  charms ;  and  during  the  trials  for  witchcraft  special 
efforts  appear  to  have  even  been  made  to  eliminate  beauty  forcibly; 
for  the  mere  possession  of  unusual  beauty  sometimes  sufficed  to 
bring  a  poor  girl  to  trial,  outrage,  torture,  and  death. 

It  may  have  .been  due  partly  to  a  natural  reaction  against  asceti- 
cism, partly  to  the  rarity  of  spiritual  beauty,  that  the  mediaeval  poets 
in  enumerating  the  charms  of  their  mistresses,  confine  themselves 
almost  exclusively  to  their  physical  features.  Professor  Scherr, 
after  quoting  Ariosto's  description  of  his  heroine  Alcina  in  Orlando 
Furioso  (vii.  11,  seq.),  for  comparison  with  similar  efforts  of 
German  poets,  observes :  "  It  is  very  remarkable  that,  as  in  this 
female  portrait  sketched  by  Ariosto,  so  with  mediaeval  poets  in 
general,  including  those  of  Germany,  the  principal  accent  is  placed 
on  the  bodily  charms  of  the  women.  Almost  all  sketches  of  this 
kind  are  purely  material.  Intellectual  beauty,  as  expressed  in  the 
features,  is  barely  mentioned.  These  old  romanticists  were  much 
more  sensual  than  modern  writers  would  have  us  believe." 


SPENSER   ON   LOVE 

That  Love,  too,  continued  to  be  looked  at  from  a  material  point 
of  view,  long  after  the  chivalric  efforts  to  idealise  it,  is  shown 
strikingly  by  the  way  in  which  Spenser  compares  love  with  friend- 
ship and  family  affection.  In  the  fifth  book  of  the  Faery  Queen* 
he  asks — 

*  "Whither  shall  weigh  the  balance  down  ;  to  wit, 
The  dear  affection  unto  kindred  sweet, 
Or  raging  fire  of  love  to  womankind, 
Or  zeal  of  friends,  combined  by  virtues  meet  ?  * 

Like  an  ancient  Greek  he  decides  in  favour  of  friendship— 

"  For  natural  affection  soon  doth  cease, 
And  quenched  is  with  Cupid's  greater  flame^ 


MEDIAEVAL  LOVE  109 

Bat  faithful  friendship  doth  them  both  suppress," 

(for) 
"Love  of  soul  doth  love  of  body  pass." 

Could  anything  attest  better  than  this  the  general  mediaBval 
ignorance  of  the  psychic  traits  or  "  overtones  "  which  constitute 
Roinaiitic  Love  1 

DANTE  AND   SHAKSPERB 

Long  before  the  day  of  Spenser  there  lived,  however,  in  Florence, 
a  poet  whose  transcendent  genius  enabled  him  to  feel  and  describe 
for  the  first  time  the  real  romantic  sentiment  of  Love.  It  is  true 
that  some  of  the  poets  of  Chivalry  had  before  him  attempted  to 
depict  the  supersensual,  sethereal  side  of  the  passion.  But  their 
portraits  lacked  the  touch  of  realism :  they  described  what  they 
imagined ;  Dante  what  he  felt. 

Dante  was  born  in  1265 :  Modern  Love  was  born  nine  years 
later — 613  years  ago.  "Nine  times  already  since  my  birth," 
says  Dante,  "  had  the  heaven  of  light  returned  to  the  self-same 
point  almost,  as  concerns  its  own  revolution,  when  first  the 
glorious  lady  of  my  mind  was  made  manifest  to  mine  eyes ;  even 
she  who  was  called  Beatrice  (she  who  confers  blessing)  by  many 
who  knew  not  wherefore.  .  .  .  From  that  time  onward,  Love 
quite  governed  my  soul.  .  .  .  But  seeing  that  were  I  to  dwell 
overmuch  on  the  passions  and  doings  of  such  early  youth,  my 
words  might  be  counted  something  fabulous,  I  will,  therefore  put 
them  aside,"  etc. 

These  are  the  opening  lines  of  the  Vita  Nuova,  in  which 
Modern  Love  is  for  the  first  time  portrayed  with  an  air  of  sincerity, 
and  concerning  which  Professor  0.  E.  Norton  justly  remarks  that 
"  so  long  as  there  are  lovers  in  the  world,  and  so  long  as  lovers  are 
poets,  will  this  first  and  tenderest  love-story  of  modern  literature 
be  read  with  appreciation  and  responsive  sympathy." 

What  a  privilege  to  describe  First  Love  not  only  in  an 
individual  but  a  historic  sense,  as  Dante  did  in  this  poem,  which 
Rossetti  calls  "  the  auto-biography  or  auto-psychology  of  Dante's 
youth,  till  his  twenty-seventh  year." 

After  that  first  sight  of  Beatrice  one  of  her  sweet  smiles  was 
the  highest  goal  of  his  desires ;  but  so  powerful  was  the  spell  of 
her  presence  that  he  was  obliged  to  avoid  her.  "  From  that  night 
forth  the  natural  functions  of  my  body  began  to  be  vexed  and 
impeded,  for  I  was  given  up  wholly  to  thinking  of  this  most 
gracioos  creature ;  whereby  in  short  space  I  became  so  weak  and 
so  reduced  that  it  was  irksome  to  many  of  my  friends  to  look  upon 


110  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

me  ...  the  thing  was  so  plainly  to  be  discerned  in  my  counte- 
nance that  there  was  no  longer  any  means  of  concealing  it."  Such 
words  as  "  trembling,"  "  confusion,"  "  weeping,"  constantly  occur 
as  the  narrative  proceeds.  Love,  he  says,  "  bred  in  me  such 
overpowering  sweetness  that  my  body,  being  all  subjected  thereto, 
remained  many  times  helpless  and  passive."  When  for  the  first 
time  Beatrice  denied  him  her  smile,  "I  became  possessed  with 
such  grief  that,  parting  myself  from  others,  /  went  into  a  lonely 
place  to  bathe  the  ground  with  most  bitter  tears."  And  in  one 
of  the  sonnets  interspersed  he  says — 

"  My  face  shows  my  heart's  colour, 
No  sooner  do  I  lift  mine  eyes  to  look 
Than  the  blood  seems  as  shaken  from  my  hearty 
And  all  my  pulses  beat  at  once  and  stop." 

But  by  far  the  most  remarkable  thing  in  the  Vita  Nuova,  is 
Dante's  own  indirect  testimony  that  such  Love  as  he  felt,  such 
supersensual,  aesthetic  Love,  was  a  novelty  and  a  puzzle  to  his 
contemporaries.  For  he  tells  how  he  met  some  ladies  who  gazed 
at  him  and  laughed  till  one  of  them  asked  :  "  To  what  end  lovest 
thou  this  lady,  seeing  that  thou  canst  not  support  her  presence? 
Now  tell  us  this  thing  that  we  may  know  it :  for  certainly  the 
end  of  such  a  love  must  be  worthy  of  knowledge." 

No  doubt  it  was  worth  knowing ;  for,  as  the  author  of  the 
admirable  article  on  "  Poetry,"  in  the  eighth  edition  of  the  Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica  (1859),  remarks:  "When  in  modern  times 
the  attempt  was  made  to  revive  tragedy,  it  proved  totally 
unsuccessful  until  this  principle  (of  romantic  love)  was  admitted 
into  the  drama  to  give  it  warmth  and  life.  Of  that  species  of 
composition  which  in  its  proper  sense  is  peculiar  to  the  moderns, 
viz.  the  novel  and  romance,  it  forms,  as  we  all  know,  the  moving 
power.  In  short,  it  influences,  more  or  less,  every  department  in 
which  the  imagination  has  exerted  itself  with  success  since  the 
revival  of  literature." 

Once  more  it  is  well  to  state  that  there  are  geniuses  in  the 
emotional  as  in  the  intellectual  world.  Dante  was  both  ;  and  the 
realistic  descriptions  he  has  given  of  the  effects  of  Romantic  Love 
have  helped  to  sustain  the  notion  that  Love  is  immutable,  and  has 
existed  at  all  times.  But  the  indirect  testimony  to  the  contrary 
just  quoted,  and  the  whole  argument  of  this  chapter  on  Mediaeval 
Love,  make  it  apparent  that  Dante's  Love  was  the  exception 
which  proves  that  among  the  others  Love  did  not  exist.  And 
even  Dante  was  not  entirely  modern  in  his  Love.  A  modern 


MODERN  LOVE  111 

lover  would  not  have  attempted  to  conceal  the  object  of  his  Love, 
but  would  have  made  it  apparent  to  all  by  his  foolish  actions  that 
he  was  in  Love  with  this  particular  girl  and  no  other ;  he  would 
perhaps  have  wooed  more  persistently,  and  his  feelings  would  not 
have  remained  unchanged  after  her  marriage  to  another.  Like 
Petrarch,  moreover,  Dante  cannot  be  quite  acquitted  of  the 
suspicion  that,  after  the  first  flush  of  excitement,  the  excessive 
and  persistent  purification  and  idealisation  of  his  passion  was 
based  not  so  much  on  real  amorous  feelings  and  motives,  as  on  an 
author's  craving  for  an  object  on  which  to  lavish  his  literary  art 
of  embellishment. 

Dante,  in  a  word,  hyper-idealised  his  passion.  He  became 
quite  deaf  to  the  fundamental  tone  of  Love,  and  heard  only  its 
overtones.  And  herein  lies  his  inferiority  to  Shakspere.  It  is  in 
the  works  of  Shakspere  that  the  various  motives  and  emotions  ^ 
which  constitute  Love — sensuous,  aesthetic,  intellectual — are  for 
the  first  time  mingled  in  proper  proportions.  Shakspere's  Love  is 
Modern  Love,  full-fledged,  and  therefore  calls  for  no  separate 
analysis.  It  is  a  primitive  passion,  purified  and  refined  by 
intellectual,  moral,  and  aesthetic  culture.  And  though  by  no 
means  universal,  or  even  common,  at  the  present  day,  it  is  yet  of 
frequent  occurrence,  and  will  become  more  and  more  prevalent  as 
time  rolls  on.  To  facilitate  its  progress  by  pointing  out  its 
characteristics,  its  evolution,  and  the  measures  that  must  be  taken 
to  foster  it,  is  one  of  the  principal  objects  of  this  monograph. 


MODERN  LOVE 

A  BIOLOGIC   TEST 

Writers  on  evolution  have  a  very  simple  and  convenient  way 
of  verifying  their  inferences,  by  applying  the  rule — which  seems 
to  hold  true  universally — that  the  different  stages  through  which 
an  individual  passes  in  his  development — physical  and  mental — 
correspond  to  the  periods  of  development  through  which  the  whole 
race  has  passed. 

This  principle,  applied  to  our  present  problem,  fits  exactly,  and 
proves  that  the  account  given  in  the  preceding  pages  of  the 
development  of  Love  is  correct. 

Historically  we  have  seen  that  of  all  affections  Maternal  Love 
is  the  earliest  and  (until  after  Romantic  Love  appears)  the 
strongest.  Then  paternal,  filial,  and  fraternal  love  are  gradually 
developed,  followed  by  friendship  (Greek),  and  finally  by  Love  proper. 


112  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Just  so  with  the  individual.  The  "baby's  first  love  is  for  its' 
mother,  whose  tender  expression  and  beaming  eyes  throw  the  first 
reflected  smile  on  its  face,  and  touch  the  first  cord  of  sympathetic 
attachment.  Then  the  father  comes  in  for  his  share  of  attention, 
followed  by  sisters  and  brothers.  At  school  begins  the  era  of 
friendship,  representing  "  classical "  love,  and  often  as  ardent  and 
Love-like  as  among  the  ancient  Greeks.  Finally  Romantic  Love 
appears  on  the  scene,  eclipsing  every  other  emotion.  And,  like 
historic  Love,  it  generally  passes  through  a  blind,  silly,  chivalric 
stage,  known  as  "  calf-love,"  which  at  last  is  succeeded  by  real, 
intense  romantic  passion,  that  leads  to  monogamous  marriage,  the 
central  pillar  of  modern  civilisation. 

Not  only  have  we  seen  that  Romantic  Love  is  the  latest  and 
the  strongest  of  all  affections,  but  the  causes  which  retarded  its 
development  have  been  indicated.  Chief  among  these  were  the 
negation  of  Individual  Preference,  and  the  absence  of  opportunities 
for  Courtship,  already  deplored  by  Plato.  As  long  as  women 
were  captured,  or  bought,  or  disposed  of  by  father  or  mother 
without  any  reference  to  their  own  will,  Sexual  Selection  on  the 
female's  part  was  of  course  out  of  the  question  ;  and  on  the  man's' 
part  it  was  rendered  impossible  by  the  absence  of  Courtship. 
Wooing  a  woman  was  not  winning  her  favour,  but  impressing  her 
father  with  a  display  of  wealth  or  social  power.  Thus  there  were 
no  opportunities  on  her  part  for  the  display  of  personal  charms  or 
the  cunning  art  of  Coyness,  or  for  inflaming  and  feeding  his 
passion  through  Jealousy  by  bestowing  an  occasional  mischief- 
making  smile  on  his  rivals ;  there  were  no  lover's  quarrels 
followed  by  sweet  reconciliations  and  an  increase  of  Love ;  no 
short  absences  fanning  Love  with  sighs  ;  no  alternate  feelings  of 
hope  and  despair,  inspired  by  his  or  her  fickle  or  uncertain  actions ; 
no  chance  for  displays  of  Gallantry  and  mutual  Self-sacrifice  and 
assistance;  no  sympathetic  exchange  and  consequent  doubling  of 
pleasures,  real  or  anticipated  ;  none,  in  fact,  of  the  more  subtle 
traits  and  emotions  which  make  Romantic  Love  what  it  is. 


VENUS,    PLTJTUS,    AND   MINERVA 

It  cannot  be  said  that  these  obstacles  to  Love  have  been  as 
radically  removed  as  they  ought  to  be.  Oriental  chaperonage  is 
still  rampant  in  France,  to  the  extinction  of  all  true  romantic 
sentiment.  In  other  countries  Parental  Tyranny  has  considerably* 
abated,  but  the  Goddess  of  Love  still  has  formidable  rivals  in 
Plutus,  the  god  of  wealth,  and  Minerva,  the  goddess  of  "  wisdom  " 


MODERN  LOVE  113 

or  expediency.  Thus  it  happens  that  even  in  the  case  of  persons 
who  are  refined  enough  to  experience  Love,  it  is  too  often  absent 
when  they  marry ;  and,  as  a  German  pessimist  sneeringly  points 
out,  no  one  has  yet  dared  to  tempt  bride  and  bridegroom  to 
perjury,  by  asking  when  the  knot  is  tied,  "  Do  you  love  this 
woman  ? "  "  Do  you  love  this  man  1 " 

Nevertheless  public  sentiment  is  continually  making  war  on 
Plutus  and  Minerva,  and  siding  with  Venus.  Probably  the 
mercantile  element  in  marriage  will  not  die  out  till  a  few  weeks 
before  the  millennium,  although  Herbert  Spencer  is  optimistic 
enough  to  believe  it  will  sooner.  "  After  wife-stealing,"  he  says, 
"  came  wife-purchase  ;  and  then  followed  the  usages  which  made,  ^ 
and  continue  to  make,  considerations  of  property  predominate  over 
considerations  of  personal  preference.  Clearly,  wife-purchase  and 
husband-purchase  (which  exists  in  some  semi-civilised  societies), 
though  they  have  lost  their  original  gross  form,  persist  in  disguised 
forms.  Already  some  disapproval  of  those  who  marry  for  money 
or  position  is  expressed ;  and  this  growing  stronger  may  be 
expected  to  purify  the  monogamic  union,  by  making  it  in  all  cases 
real  instead  of  being  in  some  cases  nominal." 

It  is  indeed  a  most  hopeful  sign  of  progress,  this  strong  and 
growing  modern  sentiment  in  favour  of  Romantic  Love  as  against 
rival  motives  matrimonial.  Novelists,  when  the  wills  of  the 
lovers  and  the  parents  clash,  invariably  and  unconsciously  side 
with  the  lovers ;  and  should  a  novelist  make  an  exception,  many 
of  his  readers  would  close  the  book,  and  the  others  would  finish  it 
under  protest  and  disappointedly.  Even  when  we  read  a  news- 
paper reporter's  thrilling  and  dramatic  narrative  of  the  elopement 
of  a  foolish  young  couple,  fresh  from  the  high-school,  our  hearts 
throb  with  sympathetic  anxiety  lest  the  irate  parent  should 
succeed  in  capturing  the  runaway  couple. 

No  doubt  this  instinctive  modern  prejudice  in  favour  of 
Romantic  Love  will  ultimately  throw  a  halo  of  sacredness  around 
it,  which  will  raise  Cupid's  will  to  the  dignity  of  an  Eleventh 
Commandment — a  consummation  devoutedly  to  be  wished ;  for 
although  the  conjugal  affection  which  grows  out  of  Romantic  Love 
is  not  always  deeper  than  that  which  results  from  unions  not 
based  on  Love,  the  physical  and  mental  qualities  of  the  children 
commonly  show  at  a  glance  whether  or  not  the  parents  were 
brought  together  by  Sexual  Selection. 


114  EOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 


LEADING  MOTIVES 

The  psychic  elements  of  Love  which  thus  far  have  been 
compared  to  overtones,  might  also  be  regarded  from  a  Wagnerian 
point  of  view  as  Leitmotive  or  leading  motives  in  the  Drama  of 
Historic  Love.  In  the  first  scenes,  where  the  actors  are  animals 
and  savages,  followed  by  Egyptians,  Hebrews,  Hindoos,  Greeks, 
and  Romans,  and  mediaeval  clowns  and  fanatics,  these  leading 
motives  are  heard  only  as  short  melodic  phrases,  and  at  long 
intervals,  pregnant,  indeed,  with  future  possibilities,  but  isolated 
and  never  combined  into  a  symphony  of  Love.  In  the  last  act, 
however,  which  we  have  now  reached,  all  these  motives  appear  in 
various  combinations,  in  the  gorgeous  and  glowing  instrumentation 
of  modern  poets,  with  all  possible  figurative,  harmonic,  and 
dynamic  nuances  ;  and  at  the  same  time  so  intertwined  and  inter- 
woven that  no  one  apparently  has  ever  succeeded  in  unravelling 
the  poetic  woof  and  distinguishing  the  separate  threads.  For  us, 
however,  who  have  followed  these  motives  from  the  moment  when 
they  first  appeared  in  a  primitive  form,  it  will  be  easy  to  dis- 
tinguish them  and  subject  each  one  to  a  separate  analysis.  We 
shall  first  consider  those  which,  like  Coyness  and  Jealousy,  are 
already  familiar  and  need  only  be  considered  in  their  modern 
forms,  and  then  pass  on  to  those  which  are  more  and  more 
exclusively  modern. 

MODERN   COYNESS 

At  least  five  sources  or  causes  of  modern  female  Coyness  may 
be  suggested : — 

(1)  An  Echo  of  Capture. — Why  are  modern  city-folks  so  fond 
of  picnics  ?  It  was  Mr.  Spencer,  I  believe,  who  suggested  some- 
where that  it  is  because  picnics  awaken  in  civilised  men  and 
women  a  vague  and  agreeable  reminiscence  of  the  time  when  their 
ancestors  habitually  took  their  meals  on  meadows  in  the  shade  of 
a  tree.  If  it  is  possible  for  such  experiences  to  re-echo,  as  it  were, 
in  our  nervous  system  through  so  many  generations,  thanks  to  the 
conservatism  of  oft-repeated  cerebral  impressions,  then  it  does  not 
seem  so  very  fantastic  to  suggest  that  one  cause  of  female  Coyness 
may  be  a  similar  echo,  or  reminiscence,  of  the  time  when  the 
primitive  ancestresses  of  modern  women  were  "  courted "  by 
Capture  or  Purchase,  and  so  badly  treated  as  wives  that  in  course 
of  time  an  instinctive  impulse  was  formed  in  their  minds  to  shrink 
back  and  say  No  to  man's  proposals. 


MODERN  LOVE  115 

(2)  Maiden  versus  Wife. — It  is  hardly  necessary,  however,  to 
rely  upon  such  a  remote  sociological  echo,  so  to  speak,  for  an 
explanation  of  a  girl's  hesitation  to  become  a  wife  even  if  her 
suitor  pleases  her.  The  thought  of  exchanging  her  maiden  free- 
dom for  conjugal  restrictions  and  duties  ;  of  giving  up  the  homage 
and  admiration  of  all  men  for  the  possible  neglect  of  one ;  of 
probably  soon  losing  her  jvuthful  beauty,  etc. — such  thoughts 
would  make  many  girls  even  more  coy  than  they  now  are,  did  not 
the  fear  of  becoming  an  old  maiu  act  as  a  counterbalancing  motive 
in  favour  of  marriage. 

(3)  Modesty. — Esquimaux  girlo,  as  we  have  seen,  "affect  the 
utmost  bashfulness  and  aversion  to  any  proposal  of  marriage,  lest 
they  should  lose  their  reputation  for  modesty."     And  the  greatest 
analyst  of  the  human  heart  puts  the  same  philosophy  into  the 
mouth  of  Juliet  in  a  passage  which,  although  everybody  knows  it 
by  heart,  must  yet  be  quoted  here — 

"  0  gentle  Romeo, 

If  thou  dost  love,  pronounce  it  faithfully  : 
Or  if  thou  think'st  I  am  too  quickly  won, 
I'll  frown  and  be  perverse  and  say  thee  nay, 
So  thou  wilt  woo  ;  but  else,  not  for  the  world. 
In  truth,  fuir  Montague,  I  am  too  fond, 
And  therefore  thou  may'st  think  my  'haviour  light; 
But  trust  me,  gentleman,  I'll  prove  more  true 
Than  those  that  have  more  cunning  to  be  strange. 
I  should  have  been  more  strange,  I  must  confess, 
But  that  thou  overheard'st,  ere  I  was  ware, 
My  true  love's  passion  :  therefore  pardon  me, 
And  not  impute  this  yielding  to  light  love, 
Which  the  dark  night  hath  so  discovered." 

(4)  Cunning  to  be  Strange. — No  huntsman  (except  a  monarch) 
would  care  to  go  to  an  enclosure  and  shoot  the  deer  confined 
therein,  nor  a  fisherman  to  catch  trout  conveniently  placed  in  a 
pond.     But  to  wade  up  a  mountain  brook  all  day  long,  climbing 
over  slippery  rocks,  and  enduring  the  discomforts  of  a  hot  sun  and 
wet  clothes,  with  nothing  to  eat,  and  only  a  few  speckled  trifles 
to  reward  him — that  is  what  he  considers  "  glorious  sport." 

The  instinctive  perception  that  a  thing  is  valued  in  proportion 
to  the  difficulty  of  its  attainment  is  what  taught  women  the 
"  cunning  to  be  strange."  Seeing  that  they  could  not  compete 
with  man  in  brute  force,  they  acquired  the  arts  of  Beauty  and  of 
Coyness,  as  their  best  weapons  against  his  superior  strength — the 
Beauty  to  fascinate  him,  the  Coyness  to  teach  him  that  in  Love, 
as  in  fishing,  the  pleasure  of  pursuit  is  the  main  thing. 


116  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

At  first  this  Coyness  was  manifested  in  a  very  crude  manner, 
as  among  the  primitive  maidens  who  hid  in  the  forest ;  or  among 
the  Roman  women  celebrated  by  Ovid,  who  locked  their  door  and 
compelled  the  lover  to  beg  and  whine  for  admission  by  the  hour ; 
or  among  the  mediaeval  women  who,  to  gratify  their  caprices  and 
enjoy  the  sense  of  a  newly-acquired  power,  sent  their  admirers  to 
participate  in  bloody  wars  before  recognising  their  addresses. 
And  so  coarse-grained  were  the  men  that  as  soon  as  the  women 
ceased  to  tease  they  ceased  to  woo  ;  as,  for  instance,  in  mediaeval 
France,  about  the  time  of  the  Chansons  de  Geste,  "  the  man  who 
desires  a  woman  yet  does  not  appear  as  a  wooer ;  for  he  knows  he 
is  certain  of  her  favour,"  as  we  read  in  Ploss.  Hence  Cleopatra's 
brief  and  pointed  rejoinder  to  Charmian  when  he  advises  her,  in 
order  to  win  Antony's  love,  to  give  him  way  in  everything,  cross 
him  in  nothing :  "  Thou  teachest  like  a  fool ;  the  way  to  lose 
him" 

(5)  Procrastination. — Love  at  first  sight  is  frequent  at  the 
present  day,  but  in  ancient  Greece  and  Rome  marriage  at  first 
sight  appears  to  have  been  more  common.  The  classical  suitor's 
wooing  was  generally  comprised  in  three  words :  Veni,  Vidi, 
Vici;  i.e.  I  Came,  Saw  the  girl's  father,  Conquered  his  scruples 
by  proving  my  wealth  or  social  position.  Sufficient  brevity  in 
this,  no  doubt :  but  brevity  is  not  the  soul  of  Love. 

"  Tant  plus  le  chemin  est  long  dans  1'amour,  tant  plus  un 
esprit  ddlicat  sent  de  plaisir,"  says  Pascal,  announcing  a  truth  of 
which  ancient  and  mediaeval  nations  had  no  conception  until 
female  Coyness  taught  it  them.  Goethe  evidently  had  the  same 
truth  in  mind  when  he  mentioned  as  a  phase  of  ancient  love 
(Roman  Elegies) — 

"  In  der  heroischen  zeit,  da  Cotter  und  Gottinen  liebten 
Folgte  Begierde  dem  Blick  folgte  Genuss  der  Begier." 

That  is,  in  prose,  there  were  no  preliminaries  in  the  love-drama, 
which  had  only  one  act,  the  fifth,  in  which  the  marriage  is 
celebrated. 

Goldsmith  on  Love. — In  Goldsmith's  Citizen  of  the  World  there 
is  a  chapter  on  "Whether  Love  be  a  Natural  or  Fictitious  Passion," 
in  which  reference  is  likewise  made  to  the  value  of  procrastination. 
As  this  passage  shows  Goldsmith  to  have  been  the  first  author  who 
had  an  approximate  conception  of  the  development  and  psychology 
of  Love,  I  will  quote  it  almost  entire.  It  is  in  the  form  of  a 
dialogue,  and  one  of  the  speakers  remarks:  "Whether  love  be 
natural  or  no  ...  it  contributes  to  the  happiness  of  every  society 


MODERN  LOVE  117 

in  which  it  is  introduced.  All  our  pleasures  are  short  and  can 
only  charm  at  intervals;  love  is  a  method  of  protracting  our 
greatest  pleasure;  and  surely  that  gamester  who  plays  the  greatest 
stake  to  the  best  advantage  will,  at  the  end  of  life,  rise  victorious. 
This  was  the  opinion  of  Vanini,  who  affirmed  that  'every  hour 
was  lost  which  was  not  spent  in  love.'  His  accusers  were  unable 
to  comprehend  his  meaning ;  and  the  poor  advocate  for  love  was 
burned  in  flames ;  alas  !  no  way  metaphorical.  But  whatever 
advantages  the  individual  may  reap  from  this  passion,  society  will 
certainly  be  refined  and  improved  by  its  introduction;  all  laws 
calculated  to  discourage  it  tend  to  embrute  the  species,  and  weaken 
the  state.  Though  it  cannot  plant  morals  in  the  human  breast, 
it  cultivates  them  when  there :  pity,  generosity,  and  honour  receive 
a  brighter  polish  from  its  assistance ;  and  a  single  amour  is  suffi- 
cient entirely  to  brush  off  the  clown. 

"  But  it  is  an  exotic  of  the  most  delicate  constitution :  it 
requires  the  greatest  art  to  introduce  it  into  a  state,  and  the 
smallest  discouragement  is  sufficient  to  repress  it  again.  Let  us 
only  consider  with  what  ease  it  was  formerly  extinguished  in 
Rome,  and  with  what  difficulty  it  was  lately  revived  in  Europe  : 
it  seemed  to  sleep  for  ages,  and  at  last  fought  its  way  among  us 
through  tilts,  tournaments,  dragons,  and  all  the  dreams  of  chivalry. 
The  rest  of  the  world,  China  only  excepted,  are,  and  have  ever 
been,  utter  strangers  to  its  delights  and  advantages.  In  other 
countries,  as  men  find  themselves  stronger  than  women,  they  lay 
a  claim  to  rigorous  superiority :  this  is  natural,  and  love,  which 
gives  up  this  natural  advantage,  must  certainly  be  the  effect  of  art — 
an  art  calculated  to  lengthen  out  our  happier  moments,  and  add 
new  graces  to  society." 

To  this  conclusion  the  lady  interlocutor  in  the  dialogue  objects 
on  the  ground  that  "  the  effects  of  love  are  too  violent  to  be 
the  result  of  an  artificial  passion " ;  and  suggests,  by  way  of 
accounting  for  the  absence  of  love,  that  "  the  same  efforts  that 
are  used  in  some  places  to  suppress  pity,  and  other  natural 
passions,  may  have  been  employed  to  extinguish  love " ;  and 
that  "those  nations  where  it  is  cultivated  only  make  nearer 
advances  to  nature," 

Goldsmith  thus  leaves  it  in  doubt  whether  he  considers  Love  a 
natural  or  an  artificial  passion.  In  the  three  passages  which  I 
have  italicised,  he  errs :  first,  in  saying  that  Love  was  "  extin- 
guished" in  Rome,  when  in  fact  it  never  existed  there,  except 
incompletely  in  the  poetic  intuition  of  Ovid  and  possibly  one  or 
two  other  poets ;  secondly,  he  errs  in  remarking  that  it  was  lately 


118  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

"revived"  in  Europe,  when  in  fact  it  was  newly-born;  and  hia 
excepting  China,  in  speaking  of  the  absence  of  Love,  can  only  be 
looked  on  in  the  light  of  a  joke  in  view  of  the  absolute  subjection 
of  women  to  parental  dictation,  and  the  fact  that,  as  one  writer 
remarks,  "  a  union  prompted  solely  by  love  would  be  a  monstrous 
infraction  of  the  duty  of  filial  obedience,  and  a  predilection  on  the 
part  of  the  female  as  heinous  a  crime  as  infidelity."  But  his 
definition  of  Love  as  "  the  effect  of  art — an  art  calculated  to 
lengthen  out  our  happier  moments  and  add  new  graces  to  society" 
is  exceedingly  good.  The  art  in  question  is  known  as  Courtship : 
and  it  is  the  latest  of  the  fine  arts,  which  even  now  exists  in  its 
perfection  in  two  countries  only — England  and  America.  The 
Italian  language  has  no  equivalent  for  Courtship,  as  Professor 
Mantegazza  tells  us  in  his  Fisiologia  delV  Amore  ;  and  a  German 
commentator  on  this  passage  in  Mantegazza  comments  dubiously : 
"  Das  Eutsprechende  deutsche  Wort  diirfte  wohl  Werbung  sein  ;" 
"  the  corresponding  German  word  is  presumably  Werbung." 
" Presumably"  is  very  suggestive.  Yet  the  Germans  have  another 
expression  of  mediaeval  origin  apparently,  namely,  "Einem  Madchen 
den  Hof  macheu  " — "  to  pay  court  to  a  girl,"  which,  though  some- 
what conversational,  has  evidently  the  same  historic  origin  as  our 
word  Court-ship;  implying  that  formerly  it  was  the  custom  at 
court  alone  to  prolong  the  agony  of  Love  by  gallant  attentions  to 
women,  which  enabled  them  to  exercise  the  "cunning  to  be 
strange." 

Disadvantages  of  Coyness. — Beneficial  as  are  no  doubt  the 
effects  which  have  been  brought  about  by  female  Coyness  in 
developing  the  art  of  Courtship,  there  are  corresponding  evils 
inherent  in  that  mental  attitude  which  make  it  probable  that 
Coyness  will  gradually  disappear  and  be  succeeded  by  something 
more  modem,  more  natural,  more  refined. 

There  are  four  serious  objections  to  Coyness,  one  from  a  mas- 
culine, three  from  a  feminine  point  of  view. 

Men,  in  the  first  place,  can  hardly  approve  of  Coyness ;  for  it 
certainly  indicates  a  coarse  mediasval  fibre  in  a  man  if  he  is  obliged 
to  confess  that  he  can  love  a  girl  not  for  her  beauty  and  amiability, 
but  only  because  she  tantalises  and  maltreats  him : 

"  Spaniel-like,  the  more  she  spurns  my  love, 
The  more  it  grows  and  fawneth  on  her  still." 

Or,  in  Heine's  delightful  persiflage  of  this  attitude— 

"  Ueberall  wo  chi  auch  wandelst, 
Schanst  du  mich  zu  alien  Stunden, 


MODERN  LOVE  118 

Und  jemehr  <lu  mich  misshandelstj 
Treuer  bleib  ich  dir  verbunden. 

"Denn  raich  fesselt  holde  Bosheit 
"Wie  raich  Giite  stets  vertrieben  ; 
"Willst  du  sicher  meiner  los  sein 
Musst  du  dich  in  mich  verlieben." 

In  one  English  sentence:  Your  amiability  repels,  your  malice 
attracts  me ;  if  you  wish  to  get  rid  of  my  attentions,  you  must  fall 
in  love  with  me. 

If  a  refined  man  can  feel  ardent  affection  for  an  animal,  a  friend, 
a  relative,  without  being  "  spurned  "  and  consequently  "  fawning," 
why  should  not  the  same  be  true  of  his  love  for  a  beautiful  girl  ? 
It  is  true ;  and  hence  the  cleverest  women  of  the  period,  feeling 
this  change  in  the  masculine  heart,  have  adopted  a  different 
method  of  fascinating  men  and  bringing  them  to  their  feet,  as  we 
shall  presently  see. 

Women,  in  turn,  are  injured  by  Coyness;  first,  because  it  makes 
them  act  foolishly.  French  and  German  girls  are  systematically 
taught  to  take  immediate  alarm  at  sight  of  a  horrid  man  (whom 
they  secretly  consider  a  darling  creature,  with  suck  a  moustache) 
and  conceal  themselves  behind  their  mamma  or  chaperon,  like 
spring  chickens  creeping  under  the  old  hen  at  sight  of  a  hawk. 
This  sort  of  spring-chicken  coyness  does  infinitely  more  harm  than 
good ;  it  makes  the  girls  weak  and  frivolous,  and  as  for  the  men, 
if  they  are  systematically  treated  as  birds  of  prey,  how  can  they 
avoid  falling  in  with  their  role  ?  If  men  are  to  behave  like  gen- 
tlemen they  must  be  treated  as  gentlemen,  as  they  are  in  England 
and  America. 

Coyness,  again,  makes  women  deceitful  and  insincere. 
"Amongst  her  other  feminine  qualities,"  says  Thackeray  of  one  of 
his  characters,  "she  had  that  of  being  a  perfect  dissembler."  And 
in  another  place,  "  I  think  women  have  an  instinct  of  dissimula- 
tion ;  they  know  by  nature  how  to  disguise  their  emotions  far 
better  than  the  most  consummate  courtiers  can  do."  It  cannot 
be  said  that  dissimulation  is  a  virtue,  though  it  may  be  a  useful 
weapon  against  coarse  and  selfish  men.  If  not  the  same  thing  as 
hypocrisy,  it  is  next  door  to  it :  and  it  cannot  have  a  beneficial 
effect  on  a  woman's  general  moral  instincts  if  she  is  compelled  con- 
stantly to  act  a  part  contrary  to  her  convictions  and  feelings. 
Though  as  deeply  in  love  as  her  suitor,  she  is  commanded  to  treat 
him  with  indifference,  coldness,  even  cruelty, — in  a  word,  to  do 
constant  violence  to  her  and  his  feelings,  and  to  lacerate  her  own 
heart  perhaps  even  more  than  the  unhappy  lover's.  Thus  instead 


120  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

of  mutually  enjoying  the  period  of  Courtship,  and  indulging  in 
harmless  banter,  "  they  gaze  at  each  other  fiercely,  though  ready 
to  die  for  love  " ;  or,  as  Heine  puts  it — 

"  Sie  sahen  sich  an  so  feindlich, 
Und  wollten  vor  Liebe  vergehen." 

/  And  why  all  this  perverseness,  this  unnaturalness,  this  emotional 
•torture1?  Simply  because — once  more  be  it  said — the  men  of 
former  days,  the  men  who  lived  on  pork  and  port,  who  delighted 
in  bear-baiting,  cock-fights,  and  similar  aesthetic  amusements,  had 
nerves  so  coarse  and  callous  that  to  make  any  impression  on  them 
the  women  had  to  play  with  them  as  a  cat  does  with  a  mouse  to 
make  it  tender  and  sweet. 

Coyness  lessens  Woman's  Love. — One  more  charge,  the  gravest 
of  all,  remains  to  be  piled  on  top,  as  a  last  crushing  argument 
against  crude  Coyness.  An  emotion,  like  a  plant,  requires  for  its 
growth  sunshine,  light,  and  open  air ;  if  kept  in  a  dark  cellar  and 
stifled,  it  soon  becomes  weak  and  pale  and  languishes.  Man's 
superior  strength  and  selfish  exercise  of  it  have  compelled  women 
to  cultivate  Coyness  as  an  art  of  dissembling,  hiding,  and  repressing 
their  real  feelings.  But  to  repress  the  manifestations  of  anger,  of 
pity,  of  Love,  is  to  suppress  them ;  hence  Coyness  has  necessarily 
had  the  effect  of  weakening  woman's  Love.  It  weakens  it  in  the 
same  proportion  as  it  strengthens  man's.  And  hence,  as  I  have 
said  before,  the  current  notion  that  women  love  more  ardently, 
more  deeply,  than  men  is  an  absurd  myth.  The  poets  have  always 
shown  a  predilection  for  this,  as  for  all  other  myths ;  and  as  it  is 
still  served  up  as  a  self-evident  truth  in  a  thousand  books  every 
year,  it  is  worth  while  to  clear  away  the  underbrush  and  let  in 
some  daylight  on  the  subject. 

Masculine  versus  Feminine  Love. — One  thing  may  be  conceded 

at  the  outset :  that  woman's  Love,  when  once  kindled,  is  apt  to 

t  endure  longer  than  man's.     Shakspere's  "'Tis  brief,  iny  Lord,  as 

Woman's  love"  is  therefore  a  libel  on  the  sex.     The  difficulty  is 

to  get  it  under  way.     It  takes  so  much  of  the  small  kindling 

wood  of  courtship  ("  sparking"  it  is  called)  to  set  a  female  heart 

aflame,  that  many  men  give  it  up  in  despair  and  remain  bachelors ; 

or  else,  like  the  young  man  in  Fidelio,  they  finally  tell  their  girl, 

"  If  you  will  not  love  me,  at  least  marry  me." 

It  may  also  be  conceded  that  Rousseau  exaggerates  when  he 
says  that  "  Women  are  a  hundred  times  sooner  reasonable  than 
passionate :  they  are  as  unable  to  describe  love  as  to  feel  it." 
This  may  have  been  true  in  his  day ;  but  that  there  have  since 


MODERN  LOVE  121 

been  some  female  authors  who  have  correctly  described  Love,  arid 
thousands  of  women  who  have  been  deeply  in  Love,  it  would  be 
absurd  to  deny.  All  that  is  here  maintained  is  that  Love  is  of 
less  frequent  occurrence  in  women  than  in  men ;  and  when  it 
does  occur  in  women  it  is  not  usually  so  deep,  so  passionate,  so 
maddening.  The  average  woman  knows  little  of  Romantic  Love. 
She  has  read  about  it  in  novels,  in  poems,  and  thinks  how  delight- 
ful it  must  be.  The  faintest  symptom  is  taken  for  an  attack,  just 
as  in  perusing  a  medical  book  people  commonly  fancy  they  have 
symptoms  of  the  disease  they  chance  to  be  reading  about.  Thus 
it  happens  that  young  girls  so  easily  "fall  in  love,"  as  they 
imagine,  and  are  ready  to  elope  with  the  first  music  teacher  or 
circus  rider  that  comes  along — 

"  A  blockhead  with  melodious  voice 
In  boarding-school  may  have  his  choice, 
And  oft  the  dancing-master's  art 
Climbs  from  the  toe  to  touch  the  heart." — SWIFT. 

It  is  quite  probable  that  Coleridge  was  right  when  he  wrote — 

"  For  maids  as  well  as  youths  have  perished 
From  fruitless  love  too  fondly  cherished  ; " 

although  this  does  not  seem  to  agree  with  the  opinion  of  Shak- 
spere  and  Thackeray  regarding  the  rarity  of  broken  lovers'  hearts. 
Morselli's  work  on  Suicide  does  not  contain  any  definite  statistics 
d,  propos ;  but  I  have  seen  the  statement  in  a  newspaper  that  in 
Italy,  during  1883,  thirty-six  men  and  nine  women  committed 
suicide — four  to  one ;  and  the  proportion  will  appear  larger  still  if 
it  is  remembered  that  girls  often  commit  suicide  from  an  anguish 
deeper  than  a  refusal. 

The  myth  that  woman's  passion  is  deeper  than  man's  is  com- 
monly expressed  in  the  form  given  to  it  by  Byron  :  that  in  man's 
life  love  is  only  an  episode,  whereas  to  a  woman  it  is  all  in  all. 
Allowing  for  poetic  exaggeration,  it  does  not  at  all  follow  that 
because  a  man  does  not  brood  all  his  life  over  Love,  he  therefore 
loves  less.  The  fact  that  Goethe,  the  poet,  also  wrote  treatises  on 
botany  and  physics,  and  made  landscape  sketches,  did  not  decrease 
the  depth  of  his  poetic  feeling  but  added  to  it.  For  it  is  a  funda- 
mental law  of  psychology  —  except  in  pathologic  cases  —  that 
continuous  brooding  over  an  emotion  weakens  and  exhausts  it; 
but  after  intervals  of  rest  it  emerges  more  fresh  than  ever.  The 
various  objects  and  ambitions  that  occupy  man  only  serve  to 
strengthen  his  feelings,  his  capacity  for  Love.  That  women  are 
more  easily  swamped  and  carried  away  by  emotions  does  not  prove 


122  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

their  feelings  to  be  deeper,  but  themselves  to  be  weaker.  Ou6 
lake  may  be  entirely  full,  and  yet  not  contain  half  as  much  water 
as  a  larger  lake  which  is  only  half-full. 

It  was  evidently  with  a  vague  desire  to  justify  or  excuse 
woman's  comparative  weakness  in  Love  that  Ninon  de  L'Enclos 
wrote  *'  Women  and  flowers  are  made  to  be  loved  for  their  beauty 
and  sweetness,  rather  than  themselves  to  love."  And  that  intelli- 
gent observer  Mrs.  Childs  adds  the  weight  of  her  feminine  testi- 
mony by  confessing  her  belief  "  That  men  more  frequently  marry 
for  love  than  women." 

To  remove  all  lingering  doubt,  consider  the  "  overtones "  of 
Love  separately.  Is  woman  ordinarily  as  absurdly  or  ferociously 
Jealous  as  man,  or  quite  so  Proud  of  her  conquest?  Is  she  so 
deeply  absorbed  in  Admiration  of  his  Personal  Beauty  1  Is  she  as 
Gallant,  and  as  ready  for  Sacrifices  1  or  does  she  not  rather  take 
his  devoted  services  for  granted,  and  consider  them  rewarded  by  a 
smile  or  some  other  trifle  ?  Indeed,  the  only  element  of  Love 
which  in  woman  is  stronger  than  in  man  is  Coyness;  and  Coyness, 
as  has  been  shown,  weakens  woman's  Love  in  the  same  degree  as 
it  increases  man's. 

Of  course  it  would  be  unjust  to  attribute  to  the  effects  of 
Coyness  all  the  difference  between  man's  and  woman's  Love. 
Much  is  due  to  the  physiologic  law  that  emotional  capacity — 
amorous  included — depends  on  brain  capacity  (not  on  the  "heart"); 
and  man's  brain  is  more  powerful  than  woman's.  But  crude 
mediseval  Coyness  must  bear  a  large  share  of  the  blame  ;  and  it  is 
probable  that  now,  having  played  its  role  of  bringing  men  to  terms 
and  making  them  gallant  and  polite  towards  women,  it  will  dis- 
appear gradually. 

"Der  Mohr  hat  seine  Schuldigkeit  gethan,  Der  Mohr  kann 
gehen." 

Already,  however,  there  is,  especially  in  America  and  England, 
a  superior  class  of  women  who,  despising  Coyness  as  crude,  arti- 
ficial, and  silly,  have  adopted  in  its  place  a  much  more  refined 
method  of  making  men  fall  in  love  with  them.  In  one  word, 
they  have  substituted  Flirtation  for  Coyness.  As  this  statement 
will  to  many  appear  paradoxical,  if  not  absurd,  it  is  necessary 
first  to  distinguish  between  Flirtation  and  Coquetry  before  trying 
to  justify  it. 

Flirtation  and  Coquetry. — These  two  words  are  so  constantly 
confused  by  careless  or  ignorant  writers  that  some  girls  are  almost 
as  much  offended  if  accused  of  Flirtation  as  of  Coquetry.  It  was 
bad  enough  for  Winthrop  to  say  that  "  A  woman  without  coquetry 


MODERN  LOVE  123 

is  as  insipid  as  a  rose  without  scent,  champagne  without  sparkle, 
or  corned  beef  without  mustard  "  (!),  but  there  is  no  excuse  what- 
ever for  "Ik  Marvel's"  saying  that  "Coquetry  whets  the  appetite; 
flirtation  depraves  it.  Coquetry  is  the  thorn  that  guards  the 
rose  (!),  easily  trimmed  off  when  once  plucked.  Flirtation  is  like 
the  slime  on  water-plants,  making  them  hard  to  handle,  and  when 
caught  only  to  be  cherished  in  slimy  waters."  No  excuse,  I  say, 
because  the  dictionaries  on  our  table  tell  us  the  very  reverse. 
Flirtation,  in  Webster,  is  simply  "  playing  at  courtship,"  without 
any  cruel  intentions ;  while  Coquetry  is  an  attempt  "  to  attract 
admiration,  and  gain  matrimonial  offers,  from  a  desire  to  gratify 
vanity,  and  with  the  intention  to  reject  the  suitor." 

That  this  is  the  correct  definition  is  shown  beyond  question 
by  the  adjectives  which  are  commonly  coupled  with  those  nouns : 
a  "  harmless  Flirtation,"  a  "  heartless  Coquette." 

A  Coquette  seeks  to  fascinate  for  the  sake  of  fascinating.  Like 
a  miser,  she  mistakes  the  means  for  the  end,  and  feeds  on  one- 
sided passion  and  admiration,  until  one  morning  she  wakes  up  and 
finds  her  beauty  gone,  and  herself  the  most  disappointed  and 
imamiable  of  old  maids.  Or  again,  she  might  be  compared  to  a 
bank  clerk  who  refused  his  salary  because  he  was  satisfied  with 
the  tinkling  of  the  money  which  he  heard  all  day  long.  The  Flirt, 
on  the  other  hand,  displays  her  accomplishments,  her  wit,  and 
personal  charms,  for  the  sake  of  enlarging  the  facilities  of  Court- 
ship, the  possibilities  of  rational  Choice. 

One  reason  why  Flirtation  and  Coquetry  are  so  apt  to  be  con- 
founded is  because  the  English  peoples  alone  have  the  word 
Flirtation — naturally  enough,  as  they  alone  allow  their  young 
people  the  blessings  of  Courtship  and  rational  choice  promoted  by 
it.  Foreigners,  not  appreciating  exactly  what  is  meant  by  the 
word,  are  apt  to  translate  it  as  Coquetry.  One  Frenchman,  who 
has  lived  long  in  England,  has  tried  to  define  Flirtation  for  his 
countrymen  by  saying  it  consisted  of  "attentions  without  inten- 
tions." This  definition  was  widely  welcomed  as  very  clever, 
Clever  it  may  be,  but  it  is  a  definition  of  Coquetry  not  of  Flirta- 
tion. For  Flirtation  never  excludes  possible  intentions. 

Flirtation  versus  Coyness. — Flirtation,  from  the  feminine  point 
of  view,  may  be  defined  as  the  art  of  fascinating  a  man  and  leav- 
ing him  in  doubt  whether  he  is  loved  or  not.  There  is  no  reason 
why  a  beautiful  and  bright  girl  should  not  charm,  i.e.  flirt  with, 
every  man  who  interests  her,  and  to  whom  she  has  been  properly 
introduced.  No  reason  why  she  should  not  dispense  her  sweet 
smiles  with  complete  impartiality,  until  she  has  made  up  her 


124  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY  j; 

mind  whom  she  wishes  to  marry.  In  so  far  as  Coyness  simply 
means  reserve  and  dignity,  she  will  of  course  still  be  coy ;  but  she 
will  not  rim  away  to  conceal  herself  in  the  forest,  or  lock  the 
front  door,  or  hide  behind  a  chaperon's  back,  or  affect  to  be  cyni- 
cally indifferent  to  men,  or  treat  the  one  she  likes  best  with 
affected  cruelty.  With  refined  men  of  the  period  Flirting,  i.e. 
fascinating  and  leaving  in  doubt,  is  quite  as  effective  in  kindling 
adoration  to  ecstasy  as  crude  Coyness  was  with  the  coarse-fibred 
men  of  the  past.  Flirtation,  indeed,  is  much  more  tantalising 
than  Coyness,  and  therefore  a  complete  modern  substitute  for  it. 

There  is  a  passage  in  Hume's  Dissertation  on  the  Passions 
which,  though  occurring  in  a  different  connection,  strikes  home 
the  truth  of  the  last  sentence  most  forcibly.  "  Uncertainty,"  he 
says,  "has  the  same  effect  as  opposition.  The  agitation  of  the 
thought,  the  quick  turns  which  it  makes  from  one  view  to  another, 
the  variety  of  passions  which  succeed  each  other,  according  to  the 
different  views :  all  these  produce  an  agitation  in  the  mind ;  and 
this  agitation  transfuses  itself  into  the  predominant  passion. 
Security,  on  the  other  hand,  diminishes  the  passions.  The  mind, 
when  left  to  itself,  immediately  languishes ;  and  in  order  to  pre- 
serve its  ardour,  must  be  supported  every  moment  by  a  new  flow 
of  passion." 

Of  course  to  those  of  a  girl's  admirers  who  are  for  a  while  left 
in  doubt  and  finally  "  get  left "  altogether,  female  flirtation  may 
seem  a  cruel  pastime.  But  there  is  a  sort  of  historic  justice  in 
this  torture  which,  indeed,  almost  amounts  to  an  excuse  for 
Coquetry ;  it  is  a  species  of  feminine  revenge  for  the  long  cen- 
turies of  slavery  in  which  muscular  man  held  weak  woman. 
Besides,  no  man  has  ever  died  of  a  broken  heart,  except  in  novels. 
And,  again,  who  is  to  blame  a  pretty  girl  for  having  fascinated  an 
unsuccessful  lover  1  A  rose  yields  its  fragrance  and  beauty  to  all 
who  wish  to  admire  it.  If  a  conceited  young  man  comes  along, 
imagines  that  all  its  beauty  is  for  him  alone,  and  tries  to  pluck  it, 
he  has  only  himself  to  blame  if  he  feels  the  thorn  of  disappoint- 
ment. 

When  Lord  Chesterfield  wrote,  "  I  assisted  at  the  birth  of  that 
most  significant  word  'flirtation/  which  dropped  from  the  most 
beautiful  mouth  in  the  world,"  he  perhaps  hardly  realised  how 
very  significant  a  factor  of  social  life  Flirtation  was  destined  to 
become.  Mr.  Galton  wrote,  not  long  ago,  that  without  female 
Coyness  "  there  would  be  no  more  call  for  competition  among  the 
males  for  the  favour  of  the  females  ;  no  more  fighting  for  love  in 
which  the  strongest  male  conquers;  no  more  rival  display  of 


MODERN  LOVE  125 

personal  charms  in  which  the  best-looking  or  best-mannered  pre- 
vails. The  drama  of  courtship,  with  its  prolonged  strivings  and 
doubtful  success,  would  be  cut  quite  short,  and  the  race  would 
degenerate  through  the  absence  of  that  sexual  selection  for  which 
the  protracted  preliminaries  for  love-making  give  opportunity." 
When  Mr.  Galton  wrote  this,  he  did  not  apparently  realise  the 
social  revolution  that  is  going  on,  or  understand  that  frank  and 
natural  Flirtation,  which  recognises  every  man  as  a  gentleman 
until  he  has  proved  the  contrary,  affords  much  better  opportunity 
for  Sexual  Selection  and  "protractel  preliminaries  of  love-making" 
than  crude,  hypocritical,  unnatural  Coyness,  which  regards  every 
gentleman  as  a  beast  of  prey  and  a  libertine. 

Flirtation  being  the  modern  art  of  widening  the  field  of  amorous 
competition  and  prolonging  the  duration  of  Courtship,  it  follows 
that  there  cannot  be  too  much  of  it — quantitatively  speaking; 
Qualitatively  it  easily  degenerates  into  frivolity,  as  in  the  case  of 
those  girls  who  get  engaged  repeatedly  before  marriage,  which 
shows  a  lack  of  judgment,  of  tact,  and  especially  of  delicacy, 
because  a  peach  should  never  be  touched  on  the  tree  but  allowed 
to  retain  its  first  blush  for  the  man  who  is  to  eat  it. 

Eefined  flirtation,  in  truth,  requires  much  more  wit,  more  tact 
and  culture,  than  Coyness,  or  than  Prudery,  which  is  the  north- 
pole  of  Coyness.  Prudery  bears  much  resemblance  to  the  artificial 
dignity  of  a  certain  class  of  young  men  who,  by  means  of  per- 
sistent reticence,  gain  a  reputation  for  aristocratic  and  cynical 
superiority.  Coquetry  even  is  preferable  to  Prudery,  for  it  is  at 
any  rate  entertaining. 

To  sum  up  this  matter  in  one  sentence :  The  coy  Prude  says 
No,  even  when  she  means  Yes ;  the  cold  Coquette  says  Yes  and 
always  means  No ;  the  modest  and  refined  Flirt  says  neither  Yes 
nor  No,  but  looks  and  smiles  a  sweet  "  Perhaps — if  you  can  win 
my  Love." 

Modern  Courtship. — What  a  grotesque  and  topsy-turvy  parody 
of  history  it  is,  this  modern  comedy  of  Courtship,  in  which  the 
man  is  the  slave  and  walks  on  his  knees !  And  how  gracefully 
the  newly-crowned  girl-queen  plays  her  role,  little  suspecting  that 
in  the  next  act  the  husband  will  probably  throw  away  his  self- 
assumed  mask,  and  insist  again  on  his  historic  rights  as  lord  and 
master  of  the  household  ! 

The  shock  which  follows  this  transition  from  the  romance  of 
Courtship  to  the  realism  of  conjugal  life  is  much  the  greatest  in 
the  case  of  the  Prude.  The  Coquette  need  not  be  considered; 
she  was  born  without  a  heart,  and  marriage  will  not  give  her  one. 


126  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

But  the  Prude  often  owes  her  unnaturalness  solely  to  an  absurd 
educational  system,  and  may  be  at  heart  the  best  of  women. 
Previous  to  marriage  she  is  taught  to  rely  on  passive  Coyness  to 
arouse  the  desires  of  man.  After  marriage,  when  she  yields  her- 
self up,  body  and  soul,  she  loses  this  weapon,  the  lover  recovers 
his  courage  and  lowers  the  pitch  of  his  devotional  ecstasy.  This 
alarms  the  girl,  who  eagerly  endeavours  to  recover  the  romantic 
Adoration  by  trying  to  please  and  coax  and  caress.  But  pleasing 
— or  active  fascination — being  an  art  which  she  never  has  prac- 
tised, she  does  it  in  a  bungling  way — overdoes  it,  in  fact — thus 
increasing  the  husband's  indifference.  Had  she  learned  the  art  of 
refined  Flirtation,  i.e.  active  fascination  with  wit  and  accomplish- 
ments, this  domestic  tragedy  would  never  have  been  enacted. 
Her  skill  and  tact  would  then  have  enabled  her  to  preserve  her 
husband's  Gallantry,  by  supplying  a  constant  variety  and  novelty 
in  those  feminine  charms  and  graces  in  which  a  superior  woman  is 
as  fertile  as  a  man  of  genius  in  ideas. 

By  her  extremely  reserved  and  passive  attitude  during  Court- 
ship the  Prude  not  only  mars  the  probabilities  of  conjugal  happi- 
ness, she  also  weakens  her  own  Love  directly,  through  Coyness, 
and  indirectly,  by  making  the  man  too  servile  and  over-anxious  to 
worship.  For  if  a  man  immediately  yields  up  his  sword  and  pro- 
claims himself  fatally  stabbed  by  a  white  wench's  black  eye,  there 
can  be  in  her  mind  none  of  those  small  obstacles  and  doubts 
which,  like  short  absences,  increase  Love.  Love-making  should 
be  a  duel  of  wit  and  mutual  fascination.  The  Flirt  does  her  part 
of  the  fencing;  the  Prude  simply  hides  behind  her  shield  and 
waits  to  see  if  the  man  can  break  it,  or  coax  her  to  throw  it  away. 
With  a  Flirt  a  man  need  not  be  a  servile  worshipper,  but  he  may 
be  a  Flirt  likewise :  which  is  a  much  more  desirable  attitude, 
not  only  because  male  flirtation  will  fan  the  woman's  Love  into  a 
brighter  flame  through  the  stimulus  of  uncertainty,  but  also 
because  it  enables  the  man  to  preserve  his  dignity.  Hence 
Beatrix's  pointed  advice  to  Henry  Esmond :  "  Shall  I  be  frank 
with  you,  Harry,  and  say  that  if  you  had  not  been  down  on  your 
knees,  and  so  humble,  you  might  have  fared  better  with  me? 
A  woman  of  my  spirit,  cousin,  is  to  be  won  by  gallantry  and  not 
by  sighs  and  rueful  faces.  All  the  time  you  are  worshipping 
I  know  very  well  I  am  no  goddess,  and  grow  weary  of  the 
incense." 

The  girl  of  the  period  is  the  girl  who  flirts,  and  who  expects 
every  eligible  man  to  take  up  her  challenge  for  a  tournament  of 
wit  and  playing  at  Courtship.  The  reason  why  there  is  much 


MODERN  LOVE  127 

more  Romantic  Love  in  America  and  England  than  in  other 
countries  is  because  there  is  more  Flirtation,  more  opportunity  for 
Courtship.  On  the  Continent  young  folks  are  too  constantly 
regarded  from  the  marriage  point  of  view.  In  Italy  and  France, 
when  a  young  lady  comes  back  from  boarding-school,  she  is 
married  as  quickly  as  possible  before  she  has  had  a  chance  to  fall 
in  love  with  a  man  of  her  choice.  Consequence  :  she  falls  in  love 
after  marriage,  and  not  always  with  her  husband.  In  Germany  a 
young  lady  is  allowed  to  see  young  men  and  even  to  walk  with 
them  in  the  street,  in  the  daytime  or  in  the  evening,  if  properly 
chaperoned;  but  under  no  circumstances  will  she  take  a  young 
man's  arm,  for  that  would  imply  an  engagement.  In  America  it 
is  otherwise ;  but  even  there,  in  the  South,  it  is  taken  for  granted 
that  if  a  young  man  calls  on  a  young  lady  three  or  four  times  he 
can  have  no  other  object  than  to  marry  her.  His  object  may  be 
to  marry,  but  not  necessarily  her.  What  he  wants  is  to  become 
acquainted,  and  if  acquaintance  "  by  summer's  ripening  breath  " 
blossoms  into  Love,  so  much  the  better ;  if  not,  it  is  a  thousand 
times  better  he  should  be  allowed  to  depart  in  peace  than  that 
two  beings  should  be  mated  who  do  not  feel  really  sympathetic 
and  companionable.  How  is  a  young  man  to.  find  his  Juliet  if  he 
is  not  allowed  to  see  a  number  of  women,  without  being  called 
fickle  ?  And  how  is  Juliet  to  find  her  Romeo,  if  mothers  frighten 
young  men  into  bachelorhood  by  such  absurd  customs  1 

The  word  Courtship,  in  fact,  should  have  a  wider  meaning 
than  it  has  now.  It  should  be  almost  synonymous  with  Flirta- 
tion, which  provides  the  means  of  bringing  together,  from  a  wide 
circle  of  acquaintances,  two  beings  who  are  really  suited  to  each 
other,  instead  of  two  whom  blind  chance,  a  few  "calls,"  or  the 
advantages  of  intimacy  resulting  from  cousinship,  have  fortuitously 
mated  for  a  life  of  probable  conjugal  misery. 

Plato's  advice  that  opportunity  should  be  given  to  the  sexes  to 
become  acquainted  before  marriage  is  much  more  followed  to-day 
than  at  any  previous  time  in  the  world's  history;  but  there  is 
still  vast  room  for  improvement. 

MODERN  JEALOUSY 

Jealousy  may  be  defined  as  a  painful  emotion  on  noticing,  or 
imagining,  that  some  one  dear  to  us  loves  another  more  than  us. 
Unlike  affection  in  general,  and  like  sympathy,  it  therefore  neces- 
sarily refers  to  a  sentient  being  and  a  possible  reciprocation  of 
affection.  It  is  a  form  of  rivalry,  of  which  there  are  two  kinds : 


123  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

rivalry  for  the  possession  of  an  object  or  a  position ;  and  rivalry 
for  the  first  place  in  a  person's  affections.  The  first  is  not  incom- 
patible with  friendship,  for  two  rival  candidates  for  a  political 
office  or  a  college  fellowship  are  not  necessarily  personal  enemies. 
But  the  second  kind,  which,  when  allied  with  doubt  is  called 
Jealousy,  is  a  deadly  enemy  of  good-will ;  and  there  is  probably  no 
cause  that  has  broken  so  many  friendships  as  the  "green-eyed 
monster,"  among  women  no  less  than  among  men. 

Modern  psychology  agrees  with  St.  Augustine  that  "he  that 
is  not  jealous,  is  not  in  love."  There  can  be  no  love  without 
Jealousy — potential  at  any  rate,  for  in  the  absence  of  provocation 
it  may  perhaps  never  manifest  itself.  But  there  can  be  Jealousy 
without  love,  i.e.  without  sexual  love ;  for  that  passion  is  often 
aroused  in  connection  with  other  kinds  of  affection — parental, 
filial,  etc.  Stories  are  told  of  dogs  practically  committing  suicide 
by  disappearing  or  pining  away  if  displaced  by  a  younger  pet  in 
the  affection  of  a  family ;  and  those  who  have  seen  specimens  of 
canine  jealousy  find  nothing  improbable  in  these  stories.  Yet  as 
a  rule  all  these  general  forms  of  jealousy — as  when  a  husband  is 
jealous  of  his  wife  if  the  children  show  her  special  favour,  or  as 
when  a  mother  is  jealous  of  a  visitor  loved  by  her  children — are 
mere  trifles  compared  with  sexual  Jealousy,  romantic  and  conjugal. 
It  is  in  painting  this  form  of  Jealousy  that  poets  have  exhausted 
the  strength  of  language.  "  Of  all  the  passions  in  the  mind  thou 
vilest  art,"  says  Spenser  of  this  "king  of  torments,"  "the  injured 
lover's  hell."  With  this,  when  once  the  lover's  mind  is  affected— 

"  'Tis  then  delightful  misery  no  more, 
But  agony  unruixt,  incessant  gall." 

"But,  0,  what  damned  minutes  tells  he  o'er 
"Who  dotes,  yet  doubts,  suspects,  yet  strongly  loves." 

In  the  animal  kingdom  sexual  Jealousy  and  rivalry  play  so 
important  a  part  that  Darwin  attributes  to  their  agency  the 
superior  size  and  strength  (in  most  classes)  of  the  male  over  the 
female.  Among  savages,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  we  see  some- 
times a  curious  absence  of  Jealousy,  both  as  regards  brides  and 
wives ;  whereas  in  other  cases,  the  passion  manifests  itself  with 
brutal  ferocity.  Thus  among  the  American  Indians  infidelity  is 
sometimes  punished  by  cutting  off  the  nose,  sometimes  by  the 
shearing  of  the  hair,  which  is  considered  a  great  disgrace.  On  the 
Fiji  Islands,  Waitz  tells  us,  the  wives  of  a  polygamist  "  lead  a  life 
of  bitter  strife  and  commit  .  .  .  the  most  atrocious  cruelties 
against  one  another  from  hate  and  Jealousy  j  biting  or  cutting  off 


MODERN  LOVE  129 

the  nose  is  quite  a  common  occurrence."  Stanley,  in  his  work  on 
the  Congo,  remarks  that  the  Langa-Langa  women  scar  their  faces 
and  busts  in  a  hideous  manner,  probably  because  compelled  to  do 
so  by  the  Jealousy  of  the  men.  In  Hebrew  literature  the  case  of 
Jacob's  two  wives  urging  him  of  their  own  accord  to  become  still 
further  polygamous,  presents  a  strange  example  of  this  passion 
being  neutralised  by  other  motives.  What  prompted  the  ancient 
Greeks,  and  what  prompts  Oriental  nations  to  this  day,  to  keep 
their  women  under  lock  and  key,  was,  and  is,  of  course,  simply  a 
perverse  and  ignorant  feeling  of  Jealousy.  In  this  feeling  also,  no 
doubt,  originated  the  Chinese  custom  compelling  women  to  mutilate 
their  feet  to  prevent  them  from  going  about ;  as  well  as  the  custom 
indulged  in  until  recently  by  Japanese  ladies  of  shaving  off  their 
eyebrows  and  blackening  their  teeth  after  marriage — a  custom 
which  shows  how  much  stronger  Jealousy  must  be  than  Admiration 
of  Personal  Beauty  in  the  affection  of  these  nations.  No  doubt, 
however,  all  these  excesses  and  cruelties  of  Jealousy  are  counter- 
balanced by  the  good  it  has  done  in  enforcing  the  laws  of  morality. 

Civilisation  does  not  weaken  sexual  Jealousy,  but  only  gives  it 
a  less  brutal  form  of  manifesting  itself.  Conjugal  Jealousy  still 
produces  the  greatest  number  of  domestic  tragedies,  of  which 
Othello  is  the  immortal  type.  It  is  already  typified  in  Hera,  for,  as 
Zeus  says  in  Homer,  "  She  is  always  meddling,  whatever  I  may  be 
about."  But  then  she  had  good  cause  to  meddle  in  the  affairs  of 
this  Olympian  Don  Juan. 

Lovers'  Jealousy. — As  for  Lovers'  Jealousy  proper,  there  is 
reason  to  believe  that  it  will  grow  stronger  and  more  common  as 
general  culture  advances.  For  the  men  who  are  most  ahead  of  our 
century  emotionally,  the  men  of  genius,  are  usually  very  jealous. 
Heine's  Jealousy  went  so  far  that  he  even  poisoned  a  poor  parrot 
of  whom  his  Mathilde  was  extravagantly  fond ;  and  it  is  probable 
that  Byron's  savage  attack  on  the  Waltz  was  dictated  by  a  sort  of 
wholesale  Jealousy  ill  regard  to  all  pretty  girls.  For  in  Love 
Byron  was  omnivorous. 

The  lover's  and  the  husband's  Jealousy  are  alike  in  their 
extreme  sensitiveness — 

"  Trifles  light  as  ail- 
Are  to  the  jealous  confirmations  strong 
As  proofs  of  holy  writ;" 

uor  is  there  probably  any  difference  in  the  intenseiiess  of  their  agony. 

To  the  lover  Jealousy  is  not  only  his  greatest  torture,  but  also 

his  deadliest  enemy.     With  this  fever  in  his  blood  even  the  man 

of  the  world  who  knows  his  "  Ars  Amoris  "  by  heart,  is  apt  to  ruin 

X 


130  HOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

his  cause  by  excess  of  blind  rivalry  and  clumsy  passion :  which 
perhaps  explains  why  so  many  great  men  have  been  refused  by 
their  best  loves.  To  endure  and  ignore  a  rival  is,  as  Ovid  already 
declared,  the  highest  and  most  difficult  achievement  in  the  Art  of 
Love ;  as  for  himself,  he  frankly  admits,  he  was  unequal  to  it. 

There  are  several  ways  in  which  lovers  ruin  their  chances  by 
awkward  excess  of  passion.  It  makes  them  appear  selfish  and 
unamiable;  and  the  pallor  which  Jealousy  inspires  is  not  that 
which  makes  a  girl  consider  a  man  "  interesting,"  and  leads  her 
through  pity  to  Love.  If  the  lover  is  not  yet  accepted,  his 
Jealousy  arouses  her  opposition,  because  he  seems  to  take  it  for 
granted  that  he  has  a  right  to  be  jealous,  and  that  she  will  neces- 
sarily accept  him.  Again,  his  attitude  repels  her  by  suggesting 
that  he  would  indulge  in  impertinent  supervision  and  tyrannical 
dictation  after  marriage.  Even  if  he  has  successfully  proposed, 
she  does  not  like  to  have  him  make  his  victory  and  prospective 
ownership  so  conspicuous  by  his  jealous  glances  and  manoeuvres. 
Besides,  a  fascinating  girl  likes  to  preserve  her  apparent  freedom 
as  long  as  possible,  and  let  others  admire  her  beauty  while  it  lasts. 

Most  fatal  is  it  for  a  man  to  assume  a  jealous  attitude  towards 
a  woman  before  he  has  been  able  to  inspire  her  with  interest  in 
him.  Her  indifference  will  thus  be  inevitably  changed  into  posi- 
tive dislike.  For,  as  Madame  de  Coulanges  says,  "  L'on  ne  veut 
de  la  jalousie  que  de  ceux  dont  on  pourraifc  etre  jalouse" — We  do 
not  desire  any  jealousy  except  from  those  for  whom  we  could  our- 
selves feel  jealousy.  Stendhal,  who  quotes  this  aphorism,  adds  a 
reason  why  women  may  be  gratified  by  a  display  of  Jealousy: 
"Jealousy  may  please  proud  women,  as  a  new  way  of  showing 
them  their  power."  And  to  a  woman  in  love  and  in  doubt,  the 
man's  Jealousy,  which  is  so  easily  detected,  is  of  course  a  most 
welcome  symptom  of  conquest. 

For  Jealousy  is  the  first  sign  of  Love,  as  it  is  also  the  last.  If 
a  man  is  in  doubt  whether  he  is  really  in  Love  with  a  girl  or  only 
admires  her  beauty,  let  him  observe  her  when  talking  or  dancing 
with  another  man  :  if  he  then  feels  "queer" — from  a  mere  uneasi- 
^  ness  to  a  desire  to  pulverise  the  other  fellow — he  may  be  assured 
that  his  emotion  has  passed  the  borderline  which  separates  disin- 
terested aesthetic  admiration  from  the  desire  for  exclusive  possession 
which  is  popularly  known  as  Love. 

Conversely,  if  a  man  who  has  been  repeatedly  refused,  or  who 
for  some  other  reason  endeavours  to  suppress  his  passion,  feels  in 
doubt  whether  the  cure  is  complete,  he  need  only  imagine  his 
former  love  in  the  arms  of  another  man,  or  before  the  altar  with 


MODERN  LOVE  131 

him :  if  that  does  not  make  him  turn  pale  and  frown  and  bite  his 
lips,  he  is  cured.  This  test,  however,  is  not  so  certain  as  the 
other,  for  sometimes  Jealousy  outlives  Love ;  and  Longfellow 
believed  that  every  true  passion  leaves  an  eternal  scar. 

Like  Coyness,  Jealousy  is  a  discord  in  the  harmony  of  Love. 
A  little  of  it  is  piquant  and  rouses  desire.  "Jealousy,"  says 
Hume,  "  is  a  painful  passion,  yet  without  some  share  of  it  the 
agreeable  affection  of  love  has  difficulty  to  subsist  in  all  its  force 
and  violence.  .  .  .  Jealousy  and  absence  in  love  compose  the  dolce 
piccante  of  the  Italians,  which  they  suppose  so  essential  to  all 
pleasure." 

Unfortunately,  Jealousy  is  rarely  content  to  remain  "  agreeably 
piquant,"  but  is  apt  to  grow  into  a  tornado  of  passion  which 
devastates  body  and  soul,  and  makes  it  the  keenest  agony  known 
to  mankind.  It  is  often  said  that  the  agony  inspired  by  a  refusal 
is  the  only  thing  that  excuses  tears  in  a  man.  This  agony  is  a 
mixed  emotion,  including  wounded  Pride  and  the  sense  of  having 
lost  all  that  makes  life  worth  living.  But  its  keenest  sting  comes 
from  the  green-eyed  monster,  who  hisses  into  the  lover's  ears  that 
now  a  rival  will  enjoy  her  sweetness  and  beauty.  Dante  did  not 
correctly  describe  the  lowest  depth  of  hell :  it  is  this  thought  in 
the  lover's  mind  that  "  now  another  will  marry  her."  It  is  that 
thought  which  drives  lovers  to  lunatic  asylums  and  suicide. 

"Some  lines  I  read  the  other  day,"  Keats  wrote  to  Fanny 
Brawne,  "  are  continually  ringing  a  peal  in  my  ears — 

"To  see  those  eyes  I  prize  above  mine  own 
Dart  Favours  on  another— 
And  those  sweet  lips  (yielding  immortal  nectar) 
Be  gently  press' d  by  any  but  myself — 
Think,  think,  Franeesca,  what  a  cursed  thing 
It  were  beyond  expression." 

"  Get  thee  to  a  nunnery,"  would  be  every  lover's  advice  to  the 
girl  who  rejected  him.  If  she  obeyed,  his  agony  would  be 
diminished  one-half. 

But  why,  if  he  cannot  have  her,  should  she  not  make  some  one 
else  happy  1  Because  Jealousy  is  the  one  absolutely  selfish  trait 
of  Love.  The  lover  who  in  other  respects  is  the  very  model  of 
altruism  and  Self-Sacrifice  is  in  point  of  jealous  rivalry  for  posses- 
sion an  absolute  egotist  to  whom  even  Jier  happiness  is  torture  if 
he  cannot  share  it.  Is  this  an  aberration  of  Lovers'  Sympathy,  or 
does  it  mark  its  climax  ?  The  answer  will  be  found  in  the  chapter 
on  Sympathy. 

Retrospective  and  Prospective  Jealousy. — There  are  three  kind?? 


132  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

of  modern  Jealousy — Retrospective,  Present,  and  Prospective. 
The  rejected  lover's  Jealousy  is  of  the  third  kind ;  it  refers  not  to 
what  is,  but  to  what  will  or  may  be.  Another  variety  of  Pro- 
spective Jealousy  is  illustrated  by  a  story  told  in  a  Moscow  journal 
of  an  old  peasant  who  married  a  young  girl  of  whom  he  was  very 
jealous.  On  his  deathbed  he  expressed  a  desire  to  give  her  a  last 
kiss.  But  hardly  had  she  touched  him,  when  he  seized  her  under 
lip  and  fastened  his  teeth  so  tightly  in  it  that  a  knife  had  to  be 
used  to  pry  them  open.  With  his  dying  breath  he  confessed  that 
his  object  had  been  to  mutilate  her,  so  that  no  one  else  might 
marry  her. 

Is  it  not  possible  that  the  custom  of  burning  widows  in  India 
was  at  first  an  outcome  of  the  Jealousy  of  some  influential  ruler 
who  set  the  fashion  ? 

Present  Jealousy  does  not  call  for  any  special  remarks,  but 
Retrospective  Jealousy  has  some  curious  features.  It  is  entirely 
non-existent  not  only  among  those  savage  tribes  who  scorn  virgin 
brides,  but  among  some  semi-civilised  peoples  in  Africa  and  Asia 
where  the  men  prefer  to  marry  women  with  a  dowry,  no  matter 
how  they  may  have  earned  it. 

In  modern  love  Retrospective  Jealousy  is  often  very  strong, 
especially  in  men  who,  though  they  do  not  hesitate  to  marry  a  girl 
who  has  been  engaged  before,  would  not  care  to  dwell  on  the 
details  of  the  previous  engagement.  Women,  too,  have  been 
known  to  indulge  in  this  futile  form  of  Jealousy.  Thus  Heine 
relates  in  one  of  his  letters  that  at  the  special  request  of  his 
Mathilde,  he  got  her  a  copy  of  the  French  edition  of  his  Pictures 
of  Travel.  "But  hardly  had  she  read  a  few  pages,  when  she 
turned  deadly  pale,  trembled  in  all  her  limbs,  and  begged  me  for 
heaven's  sake  to  close  the  book.  She  had  come  upon  a  love-scene 
in  it,  and  jealous  as  she  is,  she  does  not  even  want  me  to  have 
adored  another  before  her  regime ;  indeed,  I  had  to  promise  her 
that  in  future  I  would  not  address  any  language  of  love  even  to 
the  imaginary  ideal  personages  in  my  books." 

The  trouble  with  Heine  is  that  one  never  knows  exactly  when 
he  is  relating  facts  and  when  indulging  in  fun  and  fiction.  As  a 
rule,  certainly  women  are  not  much  troubled  by  Jealousy  regarding 
the  past.  If  the  lover  promises  to  be  a  good  boy  in  future  and 
give  them  a  monopoly  of  his  adoration,  they  are  rarely  disquieted 
by  the  question,  "  Has  he  been  in  love  before  ? "  Indeed,  there  is 
a  current  notion  that  women  admire  a  man  all  the  more  for  being 
a  Don  Juan  or  professional  lady-killer.  Perhaps,  however,  this  is 
putting  the  cart  before  the  horse  :  for,  instead  of  admiring  him 


MODERN  LOVE  133 

because  he  is  a  lady-killer,  is  it  not  possible  that  he  is  a  lady- 
killer  because  they  all  admire  him  ? 

Yet  some  truth  there  seems  to  be  in  that  old  notion  regarding 
gay  Lotharios ;  for  the  average  woman's  ideal  man  still  wears  a 
certain  mediaeval  military  cast :  he  is  conceived  as  a  muscular 
dare-devil,  reckless,  irresistible,  a  universal  conqueror  of  female 
hearts  as  well  as  of  other  fortresses. 

Jealousy  and  Beauty. — As  Love  becomes  more  and  more 
idealised,  i.e.  transferred  to  the  imagination,  its  overtones  com- 
bine and  produce  various  new  emotional  clang-tints — sometimes 
agreeable,  sometimes  harsh  and  dissonant.  Among  the  Japanese 
and  Chinese,  as  just  stated,  Jealousy  neutralises  the  Admiration 
of  Personal  Beauty  to  such  an  extent  as  to  breed  indifference  to 
shaved  eyebrows,  black  teeth,  deformed  feet,  and  a  consequent 
utter  absence  of  grace  in  gait.  But  there  is  a  more  subtle  way  in 
which  Jealousy  may  cast  a  cloud  on  Personal  Admiration,  even  in 
a  refined  Western  imagination.  Once  in  a  while  it  happens  to  a 
sensitive  man,  a  worshipper  of  Beauty,  that  he  beholds  a  vision  of 
grace  and  loveliness — perhaps  in  a  ballroom,  perhaps  in  a  theatre 
or  the  street.  But  this  sight  instead  of  delighting  him,  gives  him 
a  painful  sting  in  the  heart.  Partly,  this  paradoxical  sadness  of  a 
discoverer  may  be  due  to  the  sudden  fancy  that  this  fairylike 
being  perhaps  will  never  again  cross  his  field  of  vision.  Yet  it 
seems  more  likely  that  the  tinge  of  pain  which  o'ercasts  the  rosy 
feelings  of  Admiration  is  due  to  Jealousy,  especially  if  she  is  seen 
in  company  with  a  man.  For  a  moment  the  Beauty-worshipper 
fancies  himself  in  that  man's  place;  the  next  moment  the  con- 
sciousness of  isolation  flashes  on  his  mind,  and  the  reaction  brings 
out  the  painful  contrast  between  what  is  and  what  might  be. 
For  man,  as  Mr.  Howells  has  remarked,  is  still  imperfectly  mono- 
gamous. He  has  occasional  visions  of  a  Mahometan  heaven 
peopled  with  black-eyed  Houris ;  or  envies  the  knight  in  Heine's 
poem,  who  lies  on  the  beach  and  enjoys  the  caresses  of  the  mer- 
maids, who  come  and  kiss  him  because  they  know  not  that  he  only 
pretends  to  be  asleep. 

That  the  Beauty-worshipper's  sadness  is  due  to  a  vague  Jealousy 
seems  the  more  probable  from  the  fact  that  the  same  feeling  never 
tinges  his  admiration  of  a  living  Apollo  of  masculine  perfection. 
Whether  women  ever  have  the  same  emotions  remains  for  them 
to  teU. 

MONOPOLY   OR   EXCLUSIVENESS 

In  the  case  of  this  trait  of  Love,  Prior-ity  of  discovery  obviously 


134  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

belongs  to  the  author  of  these  lines — 

"Love,  well  thou  knowest,  no  partnership  allows^ 
Cupid  averse  rejects  divided  vows." 

Monopoly,  the  imperious  desire  for  exclusive  devotion  and 
possession,  is  the  mother  of  Jealousy.  Though  less  grim  and 
melancholy  than  her  son,  she  is  equally  presumptuous  and 
meddlesome,  and  woe  to  the  man  who  will  so  much  as  breathe  or 
smile  upon  what  she  claims  as  hers.  Monopoly,  like  Jealousy,  is 
one  of  the  selfish  elements  of  Love.  All  lovers  join  hands  and 
declaim  in  unison  the  words  of  Jean  Paul :  "  "What  pleases  us  is 
to  see  her  shrink  from  everybody  else,  growing  hard  and  frozen  to 
them  on  our  account,  handing  them  nothing  but  ices  and  cold 
pudding,  but  serving  us  with  the  glowing  goblet  of  love." 

Historically,  Monopoly  is  of  the  utmost  significance,  since  in  it 
is  rooted  monogamy,  which,  as  previously  explained,  probably 
originated  in  exogamous  Capture  giving  a  man  the  right  to  ex- 
clusive possession  of  one  woman  in  communities  where,  as  one 
writer  puts  it,  every  man  might  claim  "a  thousand  miles  of 
wives." 

The  desire  for  exclusiveness,  for  undivided  worship,  sometimes 
enters  into  non-sexual  affections ;  and  an  anonymous  writer  has 
suggested  that  the  main  reason  why  Byron  was  so  devoted  to  his 
dog  was  because  the  dog  was  "  a  creature  exclusively  devoted  to 
himself,  and  hostile  to  every  one  else." 

Yet  all  this  is  child's  play  compared  with  the  imperious  form 
Monopoly  assumes  in  Modern  Romantic  Love.  In  the  fever-heat 
of  his  passion  the  lover's  chief  desire  is  to  be  cast  on  a  desert 
island,  and  remain  there  all  alone  with  her.  "  On  ne  se  soucie 
plus  cle  ce  que  dit  le  monde,"  says  Pascal ;  public  opinion  is 
scorned  ;  all  social  feelings  annihilated.  Relatives  and  friends 
exist  no  longer — what  are  they  to  him  ?  his  pet  occupations  bore 
him  ;  and  there  is  only  one  thought  which  fascinates — the  picture 
of  a  small  and  cosy  house,  all  his  own,  a  small  parlour  with  one 
sofa,  barely  large  enough  for  two,  a  book  of  poems  in  very  fine 
print,  compelling  two  heads  to  touch  in  reading  from  it,  and  a 
breakfast-table  with  only  two  chairs;  all  visitors  excluded  from 
the  unsocial  atmosphere,  because  "three  are  a  crowd."  JTis  a 
"double  selfishness,"  doubly  as  strong  as  single  selfishness. 

Surely  Emerson— as  the  German  professor  did  with  the  camel 
— evolved  his  idea  of  a  lover  from  his  inner  consciousness.  "  All 
mankind  love  a  lover,"  he  exclaims.  Obviously  he  had  never 
Been  a  lover.  The  fact  is  that  all  the  world  thinks  a  lover  a 


MODERN  LOVE  135 

tremendous  and  ridiculous  bore — a  man  whose  whole  mind  is 
monopolised  by  one  unvarying  topic — her  perfections  and  his 
chances  of  winning  her ;  and  who  stubbornly  insists  on  monopo- 
lising your  attention,  too,  with  that  everlasting  exclusive  topic. 
Like  every  other  lunatic  he  has  one  fixed  idea ;  and  it's  no  wonder 
the  poets  always  paint  him  blind,  like  Cupid  ;  for  on  the  wide, 
wide  ocean  of  humanity,  he  sees  nothing  with  his  two  big  eyes 
but  one  little  solitary  transient  bubble. 

In  this  matter,  it  must  be  admitted,  woman's  Love  is  superior 
to  man's.  "  Oh,  Arthur,"  says  Ella,  in  the  Fliegende  Blatter, 
"  how  happy  I  would  be  alone  with  you  on  a  quiet  island  in  the 
distant  ocean  !  "  "  Have  you  any  other  desire,  dearest  Ella  1 " 
"  Oh  yes,  do  get  me  a  season  ticket  for  the  opera." 

True  Love  is  transient. — Boswell  tells  us  that  Johnson  "laughed 
at  the  notion  that  a  man  can  never  be  really  in  love  but  once, 
and  considered  it  a  mere  romantic  fancy."  And  though  this 
romantic  fancy  is  as  current  as  ever  in  society  and  literature, 
Johnson  was  right  in  his  verdict,  as  usual. 

True  Love,  indeed,  is  absolutely  exclusive  of  every  other  Love 
while  it  lasts ;  but  it  rarely  lasts  more  than  two  or  three  years ; 
and  then  the  heart,  freed  from  one  monopoly,  is  ready  for  another, 
perhaps  even  more  tyrannical,  while  it  lasts. 

That  Love  is  transient  is  most  fortunate,  for  it  is,  in  its  truest 
and  most  ardent  form,  such  a  consuming  fever,  that  the  strongest 
man  would  not  be  able  to  endure  its  mingled  ecstasies  and  anguish 
more  than  a  few  years.  The  lover's  fancies  are  his  only  food ; 
coarser  nourishment  he  scorns  ;  he  loses  his  appetite,  and  becomes 
"pale  and  interesting" — to  women,  who  like  to  see  a  powerful 
man  thus  wincing  under  their  superior  might,  and  melting  away 
before  their  radiant  beauty. 

Yet  its  transitoriness  detracts  not  in  the  least  from  the  magic 
and  the  charm  of  Love.  It  is  in  the  life  of  man  what  the  flower- 
ing period  is  in  the  life  of  a  plant.  As,  for  the  sake  of  its  fragrant 
blnssoms,  a  plant  is  tenderly  nursed  and  watered  weeks  and 
months  though  it  flowers  but  a  week ;  so,  even  if  brief  Love  were 
the  only  flower  of  life,  yet  would  life  be  worth  living  for  its  sake  alone. 

How  long  Love  may  last  depends  on  individuals  and  circum- 
stances. Sainte-Beuve,  I  believe,  has  said  that  it  never  can  out- 
live five  years.  Favouring  circumstances  are  slight  obstacles, 
rivalries  and  jealousies,  short  absences,  etc. ;  while  long  absences, 
the  distractions  of  travel,  professional  occupations,  etc.,  tend  to 
shorten  it.  In  uninterrupted  absence,  without  epistolary  en- 
couragement, the  most  ardent  Love  would  hardly  survive  a  year, 


136  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

unless  the  lover  lived  on  a  desert  island,  with  no  other  woman  to 
engross  his  attention.  Return,  however,  is  apt  to  bring  on  a 
relapse,  as  with  Henry  Esmond,  who  "  went  away  from  his  mis- 
tress, and  was  cured  a  half-dozen  times  ;  he  came  back  to  her  side, 
and  instantly  fell  ill  again  of  the  fever." 

Thus  it  is  the  fate  of  all  unrequited  Love  to  die  for  want  of 
food ;  or,  if  successful,  to  leave  the  stormy  ocean  of  passion  and 
sail  into  the  more  tranquil  haven  of  conjugal  affection. 

Woman's  Love  is  less  transient  than  man's,  because  there  are 
fewer  ambitions  to  neutralise  it. 

Is  First  Love  best? — If  Love's  Monopoly  lasted  for  life,  if 
passion  were  not  transient,  it  would  follow  that  most  men  would 
marry,  or  endeavour  to  marry,  the  schoolgirls  who  were  the  first 
object  of  their  amorous  attentions.  But  is  there  one  man  in  a 
hundred,  is  there  one  in  three  hundred,  who  marries  his  first 
Love  ?  Cases  are  known  of  men  of  genius  who  fell  in  love  at  an 
age  varying  from  six  to  nine  years ;  and  there  are  few  lads,  in 
America  at  any  rate,  and  if  they  have  an  artistic  temperament, 
wrho  do  not  have  their  cases  of  "  calf-love,"  beginning  with  their 
tenth  or  twelfth  year. 

A  boy's  first  Love  is  a  girl  of  about  his  own  age,  towards 
whom  he  shyly  makes  his  way  by  offering  her  an  apple,  a  bunch 
of  wild  strawberries,  or  a  large  hailstone  picked  up  during  a  storm 
before  her  eyes,  to  impress  her  with  his  reckless  Gallantry  and 
courage.  The  second  and  third  loves — for  schoolboys  are  fickle, 
and  schoolgirls  more  so — are  probably  not  different  in  character 
from  the  first.  At  fifteen  and  sixteen,  boys  scorn  girls  of  their  own 
age,  and  fall  in  love  with  young  married  women,  Troubadour-like. 
Perhaps  the  Dulcinea  is  a  Spanish  beauty,  with  large  thrilling 
black  eyes,  who,  seeing  the  poor  cub's  infatuation,  teases  and  tor- 
tures him  to  distraction  with  her  unfathomable  wealth  of  fascination. 

And  let  no  one  imagine  that  these  cases  of  early  passion  are 
anything  short  of  true  Romantic  Love.  For  follow  that  poor  boy 
enamoured  of  the  Spanish  brunette ;  see  him  hiding  himself  in  a 
lonely  forest,  gazing  with  rapture  on  her  photograph — perhaps  only 
with  his  mind's  eye — throwing  himself  on  the  ground  in  an  anguish 
of  tears,  wishing  that  either  he  was  dead  ...  or  her  husband 
.  .  .  and  behaving  altogether  like  a  premature  Werther. 

Such  is  calf — beg  pardon — first  Love.  And  is  this  first  Love 
best  of  all  1  Perhaps,  in  one  respect,  and  in  one  only  :  it  believes 
in  its  own  unchangeableness.  Goethe  remarks  in.  his  autobiography 
that  nothing  is  so  calculated  to  make  us  disgusted  with  life  "  as 
a  return  of  Love.  .  .  .  The  notion  of  the  eternal  and  infinite, 


MODERN  LOVE  137 

which  forms  its  basis  and  support,  is  destroyed ;  it  appears  to  us 
transitory,  like  everything  that  recurs." 

Heine  on  First  Love. — Heinrich  Heine,  whose  poetry  is  next  to 
Shakspere's  the  most  valuable  depository  of  Modern  Love,  enlarges 
on  this  question  in  his  fragmentary  but  admirable  Analysis  of 
Shakspere's  Female  Characters:  "Love  is  a  flickering  flame  be- 
tween two  darknesses  .  .  .  [the  dots  are  in  the  original].  Whence 
comes  it  ?  ...  From  sparks  incredibly  small.  .  .  .  How  does  it 
end  ?  ...  In  nothingness  equally  incredible.  .  .  .  The  more 
raging  the  flame,  the  sooner  it  is  burnt  out.  .  .  .  Yet  that  does 
not  prevent  it  from  abandoning  itself  entirely  to  its  fiery  impulses, 
as  if  this  flame  were  to  burn  eternally.  .  .  . 

"  Alas,  when  we  are  seized  a  second  time  in  life  by  the  grand 
passion,  we  lack  this  faith  in  its  immortality,  and  painful  memories 
tell  us  that  in  the  end  it  will  consume  itself.  Hence  the  melan- 
choly by  which  second  differs  from  first  love.  ...  In  first  love 
we  fancy  our  passion  can  only  end  with  death;  and  indeed,  if  the 
threatening  difficulties  in  our  way  cannot  be  removed  in  any  other 
manner,  we  readily  make  up  our  mind  to  accompany  our  beloved 
to  the  grave.  .  .  .  But  in  second  love  the  thought  occurs  to  us 
that  time  will  change  our  wildest  and  most  ecstatic  feelings  to  a 
tame,  apathetic  state ;  that  these  eyes,  these  lips,  these  contours, 
which  now  throw  us  into  transports  of  rapture,  will  some  day  be 
regarded  with  indifference.  This  thought,  alas !  is  more  melan- 
choly than  a  presentiment  of  death.  .  .  .  It  is  a  disconsolate 
feeling,  in  the  midst  of  intoxication,  to  think  of  the  sober,  frigid 
moments  that  will  follow,  and  to  know  from  experience  that  these 
ultra-poetic,  heroic  passions  will  have  such  a  lamentably  prosaic 
ending.  ...[...] 

"  I  do  not,  in  the  least,  presume  to  find  fault  with  Shakspere, 
yet  cannot  but  express  my  surprise  that  he  makes  Romeo  enamoured 
of  Rosaline  before  he  brings  him  face  to  face  with  Juliet.  Though 
absolutely  devoted  to  his  second  love,  there  yet  dwells  in  his  soul 
a  certain  scepticism,  which  finds  utterance  in  ironic  expressions, 
and  not  rarely  reminds  one  of  Hamlet.  Or  is  second  love  the 
stronger  in  a  man  for  the  very  reason  that  it  is  paired  with  lucid 
self-consciousness  1  A  woman  cannot  love  twice,  her  nature  is  too  I 
tender  to  endure  a  second  time  the  terrific  emotional  earthquake. 
Look  at  Juliet !  Would  she  be  able  a  second  time  to  endure  those 
ecstatic  delights  and  horrors,  a  second  time  suppress  her  fear  and 
empty  the  dreadful  cup  1  In  my  opinion  once  is  enough  for  this 
poor,  blessed  creature,  this  pure  martyr  to  a  great  passion." 

First  Love  is  not  best. — Thus  even  Heine,  while  lamenting  the 


138  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

transitoriness  of  Love,  cannot  help  suggesting  that  in  man,  at  any 
rate,  second  Love  may  be  stronger  than  first  On  this  point  it  is 
curious  to  note  the  difference  of  opinion  among  thoughtful  writers. 
La  Bruyere  declares  that  "  we  can  love  well  once  only — the  first 
time;  the  loves  which  follow  are  less  involuntary."  Another 
French  author,  Letourneau,  on  the  contrary,  thinks  that  one  love- 
affair  only  whets  the  appetite  for  more :  "on  a  besoin  de  vivre 
fort ; "  and  hence  "an  expiring  passion  ordinarily  leaves  the  ground 
admirably  prepared  for  the  germination  of  another  passion." 
Stendhal  held  that  a  young  girl  of  eighteen,  "  owing  to  her  inade- 
quate experience  of  life,  is  not  comprehensive  enough  in  her  desires 
to  be  able  to  love  with  as  much  passion  as  a  woman  of  twenty- 
eight;  and  a  lady-friend  having  objected  to  this  on  the  ground 
that  in  her  first  love  a  girl  must  love  more  ardently  because  her 
feelings  are  not  distracted  by  doubt  and  distrust,  as  they  are  sub- 
sequently, he  replied  that  this  very  me/iance,  in  its  struggle  with 
love,  will  make  it  come  out  a  thousand  times  more  brilliant  and 
substantial  than  the  gay  and  thoughtless  first  love.  Mr.  P.  G. 
Hamerton  seems  to  cast  his  vote  in  the  same  urn,  for  he  thinks, 
"it  is,  indeed,  one  of  the  signs  of  a  healthy  nature  to  retain  for 
many  years  the  freshness  of  the  heart  which  makes  one  liable  to 
fall  in  love,  as  a  healthy  palate  retains  the  natural  early  taste  for 
delicious  fruits."  And,  finally,  George  Eliot  asks  :  "  How  is  it 
that  the  poets  have  said  so  many  fine  things  about  our  first  love, 
so  few  about  our  later  love  ?  Are  their  first  poems  their  best  ?  or 
are  not  those  the  best  which  come  from  their  fuller  thought,  their 
larger  experience,  their  deeper-rooted  affections  1  The  boy's  flute- 
like  voice  has  its  own  spring  charm  ;  but  the  man  should  yield  a 
richer,  deeper  music." 

So  doctors  evidently  disagree.  But  the  facts  that  Heine  is  in 
doubt,  that  the  greatest  authority  makes  Romeo's  unparalleled 
passion  his  second  love,  and  that  even  Werther's  famous  love,  not- 
withstanding Goethe's  theory,  is  not  his  first,  certainly  make  the 
scale  incline  in  favour  of  a  second  or  later  passion. 

"  Now  old  desire  doth  in  his  deathbed  lie, 
And  young  affection  gapes  to  be  his  heir ; 
That  fair  for  which  love  groaned  for,  and  would  die, 
With  tender  Juliet  matched,  is  now  not  fair." 

These  last  two  lines  suggest  the  whole  psychology  of  First  Love. 
Romeo's  first  Love  was  not  his  best  Love.  When  his  soul  had 
reached  manly  maturity,  and  looked  about  for  a  proper  object  of 
affection,  he  did  not  at  once  have  the  good  luck  to  encounter  his 
Juliet.  Rosaline  was  the  nearest  approach  to  his  ideal;  so  he 


MODERN  LOVE  1?9 

worked  himself  into  a  semi-fictitious  passion  and  groaned  for  her, 
and  would  die,  until  suddenly  he  saw  his  real  ideal,  and  found  that 
his  first  passion  was  a  fragile  soap-bubble  in  comparison  to  his  true 
Love  for  Juliet,  which  no  rival  could  have  altered  one  speck. 

In  his  first  Love,  in  a  word,  he  had  fallen  in  love  with  the 
species,  rather  than  with  an  individual.  Sexual  Selection,  or 
Individual  Preference,  had  come  in  more  as  a  matter  of  chance 
than  of  decisive,  final  choice.  And  so  it  is  with  most  cases  of  first 
love.  Man  falls  in  Love  with  woman,  woman  with  man,  not  with  a 
particular  man  or  woman.  Thus  it  is  that  at  an  early  age  thousands 
of  impatient  youths  marry  their  Rosalines  before  they  have  had 
time  or  opportunity  to  meet  their  Juliets.  Doubtless  there  is  a 
Juliet  for  every  man  in  the  world ;  but  it  generally  happens  that 
she  does  not  attend  the  same  school,  work  in  the  same  manufactory, 
or  live  in  the  same  village,  or  belong  to  the  same  city-clique  as  he 
does ;  so,  being  less  adventurous  than  Romeo,  who  went  outside  of 
his  clique  for  a  sort  of  exogamous  marriage  by  Capture,  he  weds 
his  first  Love,  i.e.  his  Rosaline  ;  and  this  is  one  of  the  reasons  why 
so  few  cases  of  true  Romantic  Love  are  encountered  even  to-day, 
outside  of  novels. 

Most  marriages,  in  truth,  are  brought  about  through  accidental 
acquaintance  or  companionship,  not  through  Love.  Suppose  that 
a  score  of  young  men  who  have  never  loved  were  cast  on  a  desert 
island  with  one  pretty  girl  Though  she  were  as  unamiable  as 
Juno,  cold  and  coy  as  Diana,  in  less  than  a  month  nineteen  of  the 
twenty  youths  would  be  in  love  with  her  and  bitter  personal 
enemies.  Here  the  man  would  fall  in  love  with  the  woman  ;  the 
fundamental  tone  of  passion  would  prevail ;  whereas  if  there  had 
been  a  choice,  eighteen  of  those  men  perhaps  would  never  have 
dreamed  of  proposing  to  that  girl.  Now  second  Love  is  much 
more  apt  to  be  thus  influenced  by  Individual  Preference  than  first; 
and  the  more  Love  is  individualised  the  deeper  it  is.  Failure  to 
find  lasting  satisfaction  in  the  first  choice  makes  a  man  more  slow 
and  cautious  in  his  second  choice. 

At  the  same  time  the  mind  expands  and  grows,  and  age 
strengthens  not  only  the  intellect  but  the  emotions  as  well  For 
his  size,  a  boy  may  love  as  ardently  as  a  man  ;  but  the  man  is  bigger. 

The  history  of  the  race  agrees  with  that  of  the  individual  in 
showing  that  Love  at  first  is  a  general  passion,  only  slightly  dis- 
criminative, but  becomes  more  and  more  so  as  time  goes  on. 

Even  the  objection  urged  against  second  Love  by  Goethe  and 
Heine  appears  of  no  special  significance  when  brought  face  to  face 
with  facts.  Very  few  men,  if  any,  who  are  in  Love  a  second  or 


140  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

third  time,  sit  in  a  corner  to  muse  over  the  transitoriness  of  passion 
till  they  become  "disgusted  with  life."  On  the  contrary,  they 
feel  convinced  that  the  preceding  infatuation  was,  after  all,  not  real 
indomitable  Love,  such  as  they  now  experience  towards  Daisy 
No.  2 ;  which  second  infatuation  they  absolutely  know  is  the 
genuine  article  ;  just  as  they  know  that  no  one  ever  before  loved  so 
deeply  and  devotedly.  This  naive  self-confidence  of  the  lover  in 
the  unprecedented  ardour  and  uniqueness  of  his  passion  is  one  of 
the  most  sublime  and  ridiculous  aspects  of  Love. 

And  here  it  may  be  said,  for  the  benefit  of  timid  souls  who 
may  possibly  fear  that  harm  may  result  to  the  cause  of  Love  from 
exposing  its  perishableness,  that  the  only  persons  who  could  be 
injured  by  the  destruction  of  this  illusion — those  who  happen  to 
be  in  Love — will  positively  and  absolutely  refuse  to  believe  that 
their  particular  passion  is  fugitive.  They  will  simply  laugh  in  the 
face  of  any  one  who  questions  the  immortality  of  their  Love ;  and 
a  year  or  two  later,  perhaps,  they  will  laugh  again — for  a  different 
reason. 

Indeed,  the  notion  that  true  Love  never  dies  and  will  for  ever 
monopolise  the  soul,  may  actually  do  harm,  and  sometimes  does 
so.  The  disappointed  lover  commits  suicide  not  because  his 
torments  seem  intolerable  for  the  moment,  but  because  he  is  con- 
vinced they  will  last  for  ever,  and  thus  make  life  not  worth  living. 

A  review  of  the  situation  brings  out  the  truth  that  the  only 
apparent  advantage  which  First  Love  has  over  later  passions  is 
Novelty.  Yet  even  this  advantage  proves  to  be  illusory;  for 
though  the  Second  Love  may  not  be  a  novelty,  the  Girl  is ;  and 
does  not  Moore,  the  modern  Auakreon,  sing — 

"Enough  for  me  that  she's  a  new  one"? 

One  more  consideration.  There  is  an  adage,  not  entirely  un- 
known, that  practice  makes  perfect ;  and  psychology  teaches  that 
feelings  tend  to  become  deeper  by  repetition.  Why  should  Love 
be  an  exception?  The  channels  worn  in  the  brain  by  the  first 
emotions  will  be  reopened  and  widened  by  the  new  flood  of  passion ; 
and  thus  remembered  emotion  will  add  its  force  to  that  of  the 
present  moment. 

Has  the  reader  ever  heard  Wagner's  Nibelung  Tetralogy  ?  If 
so,  he  will  remember  with  what  a  thrill  of  delight  he  recognised 
in  the  later  dramas  some  of  the  motives  and  melodies  he  had 
heard  in  the  preceding  ones.  In  the  later  dramas  these  melodies 
are  appreciated  not  only  for  their  own  intrinsic  beauty,  but  be- 


MODERN  LOVE  141 

cause  they  come  laden  with  the  sad  and  joyous  associations  and 
memories  of  the  preceding  scenes  which  they  illustrated. 

Wagner  was  not  only  a  great  musician  and  dramatist,  he  was 
also  a  most  subtle  psychologist  He  doubled  the  power  of  music 
by  lidding  to  the  enjoyment  of  the  moment  the  strong  current  of 
remembered  emotion.  And  this  is  precisely  what  a  later  passion 
of  manhood  adds  to  the  na'ive  delights  of  First  Love. 

It  is  remarkable  how  many  analogies  there  are  between  Music 
and  Love — the  youngest  art  and  the  youngest  sentiment ;  and  how 
the  love  of  the  divine  art  enables  one  to  understand  and  feel  more 
deeply  the  music  of  the  divine  passion. 

PRIDE   AND   VANITY 

Jealousy  and  Monopoly  are  the  two  selfish  features  of  Love 
which  urge  an  enamoured  couple  to  flee  society  and  friends,  and 
take  refuge  on  a  desert  island.  Fortunately  there  is  in  the 
chemistry  of  Love  a  third  selfish  element — the  Pride  of  successful 
wooing,  which  commonly  is  strong  enough  to  neutralise  the  anti- 
social tendencies  of  the  other  two.  If  a  lover's  passion  has  not 
yet  risen  to  fever-heat,  nothing  (except  Jealousy)  will  so  suddenly 
raise  it  as  the  Pride  and  conceit  inspired  by  noticing  that  people 
ill  general  admire  his  chosen  girl ;  the  more  of  the  admirers,  the 
greater  his  Pride.  And  if,  in  addition,  sympathising  friends 
directly  approve  his  choice  and  laud  her  merits  in  detail,  then  his 
transports  of  ecstasy  become  celestial. 

Inasmuch  as  in  moments  of  elation  over  success  of  any  kind  a 
man  feels  as  if  nothing  were  beyond  his  power,  an  accepted  lover 
is  as  proud  (I  suppose)  as  if  he  had  conquered  not  only  one  girl, 
but  the  whole  feminine  kingdom — or  queendom :  for  surely  the 
one  chosen  by  him  is  the  cleverest  and  most  beautiful  of  all; 
whence  it  follows  that  all  the  inferior  ones  would  of  course  have 
been,  only  too  proud  if  he  had  condescended  to  pay  his  addresses 
to  them. 

Why  do  great  men  so  often  marry  women  who  are  not  especially 
attractive  as  to  personal  appearance,  when  often  they  might  have 
had  their  choice  among  a  group  of  beauties  ?  Because  the  spoiled 
beauties  did  not  understand  the  art  of  flattery,  sincere  or  otherwise. 
Every  man  wishes  to  be  considered  either  a  creative  genius  or  a 
h:ro.  The  woman  who  knows  how  to  touch  the  sympathetic 
chord,  to  make  each  one's  particular  kind  of  Pride  vibrate,  has  him 
ut  her  feet  in  an  instant. 

In  conjugal  life  the  most  ludicrous  of  all  sights  is  the  royal  self- 
complacency  with  which  a  man  accepts  the  eager  worship  of  his  wife. 


142  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Conversely,  a  rejected  lover's  heart  bleeds  from  so  many  wounds 
that  it  is  difficult  to  count  them ;  but  of  all  these  wounds  the  one 
inflicted  by  the  jealous  thought  that  she  will  now  marry  another 
is  alone  deep  as  that  of  his  offended  Pride.  The  sense  of  superi- 
ority which  every  man  feels  over  every  other  man  is  crushed,  and 
cannot  be  laid  as  a  flattering  unction  to  the  soul.  Hence  a  girl 
who  refuses  a  proposal  and  does  not  at  least  keep  it  a  secret,  is  not 
only  quite  as  mean,  but  a  thousand  times  more  cruel  than  a  man 
who  will  "kiss  and  tell." 

Coquetry. — Yet  of  all  secrets  the  compliment  of  an  offer  is  the 
harde.st  for  a  woman  to  keep  ;  so,  in  strictest  confidence,  she  tells 
it  to  only  one  solitary  person,  who  ditto,  who  ditto,  who  ditto,  etc. 
etc.  etc.  etc.  and  so  on. 

There  is  a  class  of  women  whose  sole  pleasure  in  life  appears  to 
be  derived  from  vanity  gratified  by  offers  of  Love  and  Marriage. 
Of  all  the  elements  of  Love — and  there  are  at  least  eleven — her 
soul  is  affected  by  one  alone — the  overtone  of  Pride.  The  Coquette 
has  already  been  superficially  examined,  and  distinguished  from 
the  Flirt.  But  this  is  the  place  where  she  must  be  placed  under 
the  microscope  and  more  closely  examined.  A  great  many  dis- 
tinguished observers  have  dissected  her,  and  here  are  a  few  of 
their  discoveries. 

Congreve  lets  her  off  easily — 

"  'Tis  not  to  wound  a  wanton  boy, 
Or  amorous  youth,  that  gives  the  joy  ; 
But  'tis  the  glory  to  have  pierced  the  swain 
For  whom  inferior  beauties  sighed  in  vain." 

Fielding  is  less  lenient :  "  The  life  of  a  coquette  is  one  constant 
lie."  "  The  coquette,"  says  Mr.  T.  B.  Aldrich — "  all's  one  to  her; 
above  her  fan  she'd  make  sweet  eyes  at  Caliban."  According  to 
Victor  Hugo,  "  God  created  the  coquette  as  soon  as  He  had  made 
the  fool;"  and  Byron  asks,  "What  careth  she  for  hearts  when 
once  possessed  1 "  When  Moore  wrote — 

"  More  joy  it  gives  to  woman's  breast 
To  make  ten  frigid  coxcombs  vain, 
Than  one  true  manly  lover  blest  j " 

he  had  evidently  just  left  the  chill  atmosphere  of  a  coquette.  "A 
coquette,"  says  A.  Duprey,  "  is  more  occupied  with  the  homage 
we  withhold  than  with  that  which  we  bestow  upon  her." 
"Coquettes  are  the  quacks  of  love,"  says  Rochefoucauld.  "Heavt- 
lessness  and  fascination,  in  about  equal  proportions,  constitute," 
according  to  Mme.  Deluzy,  "  the  receipt  for  forming  the  character 
of  a  coquette."  And  Poincelot  caps  the  climax :  "  An  asp  would 


MODERN  LOVE  143 

render  its  sting  more  venomous  by  dipping  it  into  the  heart  of  a 
coquette." 

There  are  masculine  as  well  as  feminine  Coquettes ;  but  there 
is  one  striking  difference  between  them.  To  the  female  Coquette 
all  is  game  that  gets  into  her  net ;  she  will  turn  away  from  a  man 
of  genius,  an  Apollo,  already  at  her  feet,  to  fascinate  a  rough  and 
freckled  country  lad  at  first  sight ;  whereas  a  male  Coquette  rarely 
wastes  his  powder  on  a  girl  who  isn't  pretty.  And  even  herein  is 
seen  the  superiority  of  man's  Love  to  woman's.  The  male  Coquette 
is  actuated  by  Admiration  of  Beauty  as  well  as  by  Pride;  the 
female  Coquette  by  Pride  alone. 

Cannibals  have  a  quaint  old  custom  of  eating  certain  parts  of 
a  formidable  enemy's  body,  in  the  belief  that  they  will  thus  inherit 
his  qualities, — as  by  eating  his  tongue,  his  eloquence ;  his  heart, 
his  courage.  What  a  delicious  gastronomic  morsel  a  Coquette's  heart 
would  be  to  these  savages,  whose  principal  amusement  is  cruelty  ! 

Perhaps  the  best  description  ever  given  of  a  Coquette  is  Thack- 
eray's portraiture  of  Beatrix — "  A  woman  who  has  listened  to " 
her  admirers,  "  and  played  with  them  and  laughed  with  them, — 
who,  beckoning  them  with  lures  and  caresses,  and  with  Yes  smiling 
from  her  eyes,  has  tricked  them  on  to  their  knees,  and  turned  her 
back  and  left  them." 

Love  and  Rank. — Not  so  many  years  ago  the  newspapers  of  a 
certain  European  country  made  a  great  deal  of  ado  about  a  forth- 
coming marriage  between  a  blue-blooded  youth  and  a  ditto  maiden, 
for  the  reason  that  it  was  "  a  real  Love-match."  Poor  princes  ! 
so  rarely  are  they  allowed  to  choose  their  own  Juliet,  they  who 
are  supposed  to  be  the  rulers  of  the  land.  Until  quite  recently,  it 
is  true,  public  opinion  on  the  Continent  sanctioned  a  Love-marriage 
between  an  aristocrat  and  a  non-aristocrat  provided  it  was  unlaw- 
ful, i.e.  morganatic,  a  special  royal  euphemy  for  bigamy ;  but  now 
even  this  privilege  is  abolished,  and  princes  can  marry  one  of  equal 
rank  only,  in  pursuance  of  a  custom  more  tyrannical,  more  restric- 
tive than  the  parental  command  on  which  marriage-unions  de- 
pended in  ancient  and  mediaeval  times. 

German  novelists  have  made  considerable  progress  in  their  art 
in  recent  years,  but  in  one  respect  it  seems  to  be  very  difficult  for 
them  to  substitute  realism  for  romance.  In  eveiy  love  story, 
almost,  one  of  the  leading  characters  must  be  either  a  prince  or  a 
princess.  As  if  it  were  not  the  very  essence  of  a  prince  and  a 
princess  that  they  shall  not  be  allowed  to  love  and  marry  for  Love 
— unless  they  are  clever  enough  to  fall  in  Love  with  the  partner 
singled  out  for  them,  which  happens  0nce  in  a  hundred  times,  perhaps. 


144  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

But  it  is  not  only  in  the  highest  circles  that  aristocratic  Pride 
is  opposed  to  free  Sexual  Selection.  It  extends  through  a  hundred 
scales  of  the  social  ladder.  Germany  presents  a  remarkable 
example.  The  metaphysician  Eduard  von  Hartmann  credits  the 
government  of  that  country  with  great  astuteness.  Not  having 
much  money  to  pay  its  officials,  it  has  established  a  legion  of  dis- 
tinctions of  rank  and  titles,  for  the  sake  of  which  the  officials  are 
quite  willing  to  forego  a  larger  salary.  Of  the  ludicrous  conceit 
inspired  by  this  distinction  of  having  even  the  slightest  kind  of  a 
"  handle  "  to  their  name,  I  can  give  an  amusing  instance  from  my 
own  experience.  Some  years  ago,  desiring  to  see  the  Intendant, 
or  Manager,  of  the  Munich  Opera-house,  I  entered  a  little  room, 
marked  Portier,  and  found  that  gentleman  comfortably  seated,  with 
his  cap  on.  He  took  my  card,  on  which  there  was  no  "handle" 
of  any  sort,  and  replied  sternly,  "The  Inteudant  is  in;  I  will  send 
up  your  card ; "  adding,  more  severely  still,  "  And,  young  man,  let 
me  tell  you,  that  when  you  come  into  the  presence  of  a  royal  official, 
it  behoves  you  to  remove  your  hat ! " 

Harmless  as  such  childish  vanity  may  seem,  it  is  yet  one  of  the 
reasons  why  there  are  fewer  good-looking  women  in  Germany  than 
in  most  European  countries — France  always  excepted.  For  a  girl, 
whose  father  wears  on  his  coat  the  order  of  the  black  eagle,  to 
marry  a  young  man  whose  father  only  has  the  order  of  the  green 
eagle,  would  be  considered  an  unpardonable  mesalliance,  and  would 
scandalise  the  whole  neighbourhood.  Of  course  it  does  not  make 
much  difference  in  a  woman's  own  looks  whether  she  marries  a 
man  she  loves  or  one  whom  she  can  barely  tolerate,  and  who  is 
forced  on  her  by  parental  desire  and  public  opinion,  but  it  does 
make  a  difference  with  her  children ;  and  even  in  her  own  case,  is 
it  not  self-evident  that  the  smile  of  pleasure  at  being  happily  married 
is  a  better  preservative  of  youthful  beauty  than  the  constant  frown 
of  disappointment,  perhaps  of  disgust  1 

The  highest  treason  against  Cupid,  however,  is  committed  by 
those  American  women,  who,  without  the  excuse  of  inherited  custom, 
come  to  Europe  with  their  money  to  marry  a  baron.  Fortunately 
such  marriages  have  almost  always  ended  so  wretchedly  that  the 
fashion  has  somewhat  lost  its  popularity.  What  is  a  baron  1  Per- 
haps a  man  whose  great-great-great-grandfather  "  lent "  some  duke 
or  king  a  few  thousand  gold  pieces,  in  return  for  which  he  was  allowed 
to  place  "  von  "  or  "  de  "  before  his  name.  And  on  the  strength 
of  this  little  word  the  family  Pride  has  gone  on  steadily  increasing 
through  various  generations — or  rather,  degenerations. 

Physiology  is  not  usually  considered  an  ironic  science,  but  it 


MODERN  LOVE  145 

cannot  help  writing  a  satire  when  it  teaches  that  "  blue  "  blood  is 
venous  blood,  charged  with  the  waste  products  of  the  bodily  tissues. 
How  much  better  than  this  irony  would  iron  be,  i.e.  some  fresh, 
red,  arterial  blood  infused  in  the  bodies  of  the  Continental  aris- 
tocracy. The  English  aristocracy,  on  the  other  hand,  presents  one 
of  the  finest  types  of  manhood  and  womanhood ;  and  the  reason  is 
ouggested  by  Darwin :  "  Many  persons  are  convinced,  as  appears 
to  me  with  justice,  that  our  aristocracy,  including  under  this  term 
all  wealthy  families  in  which  primogeniture  has  long  prevailed,  from 
having  chosen  during  many  generations  from  all  classes  the  more 
beauthul  women  as  their  wives,  have  become  handsomer,  according 
to  the  European  standard,  than  the  middle  classes." 

Vivid  as  the  feeling  of  pride  must  be  in  a  man  of  humble  origin 
who  has  succeeded  in  winning  the  Love  of  a  woman  of  a  higher 
social  grade;  and  greatly  as  a  Coquette  must  be  tickled  in  counting 
off  the  number  of  hearts  offered  to  her,  on  her  fingers  if  sLe  has 
enough  to  go  round  :  yet  the  climax  of  Lover's  Pride,  it  seems  tu 
me,  must  be  reached  by  a  man  of  noble  birth  who,  scorning 
mediaeval  puerilities,  marries  the  girl  who  has  won  his  heart,  and 
were  she  but  a  plump,  rosy-cheeked  peasant  girl.  This  vivid  feeling 
was  doubtless  realised  by  the  Grand  Duke  of  Austria  when  he 
married  Philippine  Welser,  by  the  Duke  of  Bavaria  when  he 
married  Maria  Pettenbeck. 

SPECIAL   SYMPATHY 

Thanks  to  the  social  instinct,  our  pains  are  halved,  our  pleasures 
doubled,  if  we  can  share  them  with  others.  The  proverb  that 
misery  loves  company  expresses  only  half  the  truth ;  happiness, 
too,  loves  company.  The  late  King  of  Bavaria  used  to  enjoy  an 
opera  most  if  he  was  the  sole  spectator  in  the  house :  but  most 
persons  would  lose  half  their  pleasure  in  this  way.  Nor  is  this  a 
purely  imaginary  feeling ;  for  in  a  successful  performance  there  are 
moments  when  the  intensely-silent  and  universal  absorption  seems 
to  raise  a  magnetic  wave,  which  crosses  the  house  and  makes  all 
nerves  vibrate  and  thrill  in  unison.  Again,  if  a  man  whom  constant 
attendance  at  places  of  amusement  has  rendered  blase,  happens  to 
sit  next  to  a  young  girl  who  visits  the  theatre  for  the  first  time, 
the  emotional  play  of  her  features,  by  reviving  the  memory  of  his 
first  experiences,  enables  him  to  share  her  feelings  sympathetically, 
and  thus  to  enjoy  the  performance  doubly.  And  is  it  not  a  uni- 
versal experience  that  if  we  witness  sublime  or  beautiful  scenes — 
if  we  approach  the  Niagara  Falls  in  a  small  boat  from  below,  or  if, 

L 


146  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

standing  on  the  top  of  the  Breithorn  near  Zermatt,  we  see  almost 
the  whole  of  Switzerland  and  the  Tyrol,  parts  of  France  and  Italy, 
down  to  Lago  Maggiore,  at  the  same  moment — almost  our  first 
thought  is,  "  Oh,  if  So-and-so  could  only  see  me  now  and  share 
this  wondrous  sight  with  me  ! " 

Nor  is  this  instinctive  craving  for  Sympathy  absent  in  the  mind 
of  the  poet  who  prefers  to  be  alone  with  Nature;  on  the  contrary, 
it  is  even  deeper  in  his  case.  For  to  him  Nature  is  personal ;  he 

"Finds  tongues  in  trees,  books  in  the  running  brooks, 
Sermons  in  stones  ;  " 

nor  does  Nature  refuse  her  sympathy ;  for  does  she  not  harmonise 
with  all  his  moods,  looking  gloomy  if  he  is  sad,  bright  if  he  is 
cheerful ? 

From  these  general  manifestations  of  emotional  partnership 
Lover's  Sympathy  differs  in  being  omnipresent  and  more  exclusively 
concentrated  on  one  person.  There  is  an  association  of  emotions 
as  well  as  of  ideas :  and  as  every  idea  of  excellence  recalls  her 
Perfection,  so  every  emotion  inspired  by  a  beautiful  object  calls  up 
the  image  of  the  Beauty  par  excellence.  Thus  Love  gets  the  bene- 
fit of  all  these  associated  emotions — waggon-loads  of  kindling  wood: 

How  Love  intensifies  Emotions.  —  But  is  it  literally  true  that 
in  Love,  as  Mr.  Spencer  puts  it,  "  purely  personal  pleasures  are 
doubled  by  being  shared  with  another  1 "  It  is  true  ;  though  the 
way  in  which  this  is  done  is  difficult  to  explain.  No  psychologist, 
so  far  as  I  am  aware,  has  cracked  the  nut.  I  have  given  con- 
siderable thought  to  the  subject,  and  venture  to  offer  the  following 
three  suggestions  as  to  the  method  by  which  Love  doubles  our 
pleasures  : — 

(1)  The  lover's  pleasures  are  increased  by  the  simple  process  of 
emotional  addition.     That  is,  supposing  him  to  be  reading  a  poem 
or  story  to  his  beloved,  he  will  experience  at  one  and  the  same 
moment  not  only  the  emotions  inspired  by  the  poem  or  novel  he  is 
reading,  but  those  due  to  the  sense  of  her  presence.     As  the  mind 
does  not  stop  to  analyse  its  feelings  at  such  moments,  all  these 
various   pleasurable   emotions  will   coalesce   into   one   seeitingly 
homogeneous  feeling  of  happiness ;   just   as  two  complementary 
colours,  or  all  the  colours  of  the  rainbow,  if  mixed,  will  produce 
the  simple  sensation  called  white. 

(2)  The  second  way  in  which  sympathetic  companionship  inten- 
sifies a  lover's  feelings  is  through  what  may  be  called  emotional 
resonance.      If  you  take  a  violin-string  in  your  hands,  stretch  it 
tightly,  and  then  get  some  one  to  pluck  it,  a  very  faint  sound  only 


MODERN  LOVE  M7 

will  be  heard.  But  put  it  in  its  proper  place,  over  the  resonant 
surface  of  the  instrument,  and  it  will  produce  a  full,  loud,  mellow 
tone.  A  human  countenance  is  such  an  instrument — a  sort  of 
emotional  sounding-board.  Every  man  feels  more  or  less  pleased 
with  himself  if  he  gets  off  at  table  what  he  considers  a  wise  or 
witty  remark.  If  the  sounding-boards  of  his  neighbours  vibrate 
responsively  to  his  jokes,  he  feels  proud  and  is  doubly  pleased;  but 
if  they  only  grin  politely,  the  tone  of  his  self-satisfaction  is  imme- 
diately lowered  an  octave  and  dies  away  pianissimo.  Now  between 
lovers  such  a  fiasco  is  absolutely  impossible.  They  never  grin  at 
one  another's  sayings  for  the  sake  of  politeness  merely.  His 
most  platitudinous  remarks  are  sure  to  start  a  symphony  of  smiles 
on  her  countenance,  where  another  man's  wittiest  epigrams  would 
be  barely  rewarded  with  a  slight  curl  of  the  lips ;  and  as  for  him, 
she  may  say  anything  she  pleases,  he  never  knows  what  she  says 
but  hears  only  the  music  of  her  voice — as  if  her  words  were  the 
text,  the  rising  and  falling  of  her  voice  the  melody,  of  an  Italian 
opera.  No  wonder  lovers  are  so  exclusively  interesting  to  each 
other,  and  such  unmitigated  bores  to  other  people. 

Unfortunately  lovers'  sympathy  is  rarely  complete  or  durable. 
Sooner  or  later  some  difference  of  taste  or  opinion  is  discovered 
which  has  the  same  effect  as  a  crack  in  the  sounding-board — the 
resonance  is  destroyed.  Yet  it  can  be  restored  by  using  glue ;  and 
violin-builders  will  tell  you  that  a  glued  instrument  is  often  better 
than  one  which  has  never  had  a  crack. 

(3)  Thirdly,  Love  intensifies  human  feelings  by  producing  a 
state  of  emotional  hypercesthesia,  or  supersensitiveness,  which  hag 
the  effect  of  a  microphone  in  multiplying  the  loudness  of  every 
impression.  Music  teachers  whose  acoustic  nerves  are  rendered 
excessively  irritable  by  overwork ;  students  whose  eyes,  from 
reading  late  at  night,  are  in  the  same  condition,  are  annoyed  by 
sights  and  sounds  which  ordinary  mortals  barely  notice.  But 
Love  with  its  sleepless  night  daily  fevers,  and  prolonged  fastings 
is  more  potent  than  any  other  cause  in  producing  siu-h  a  state  of 
extreme  sensitiveness  to  every  impression.  Lovers'  souls  may 
therefore  be  aptly  compared  to  ^Eolian  harps.  If  you  leave  the 
strings  of  such  an  instrument  in  a  state  of  very  loose  tension,  they 
resemble  the  souls  of  ordinary  mortals  not  in  Love  :  for  it  takes 
a  very  strong  breeze  to  elicit  any  sound  from  them.  But  raise 
them  to  a  higher  state  of  tension,  like  the  souls  of  iovers,  and  the 
faintest  breath  of  air  will  cause  them  to  sound  in  sympathetic 
unison  all  their  harmonics — which  is  another  name  for  overtones. 

Development  of  Sympathy. — Not  only  does  Love  thus   owe 


148  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

much  of  its  unique  intenseness  to  Sympathy,  but  there  are  weighty 
reasons  for  believing  that  Love  has  already  played  an  important 
role,  and  is  destined  to  play  a  still  more  important  one,  in 
modifying  the  meaning  of  Sympathy  and  in  extending  its  influence 
to  society  in  general. 

When  the  absence  of  true  Romantic  Love  among  savages  was 
being  pointed  out  more  emphasis  should  have  been  placed  on  the 
fact  that  they  seem  to  be  utter  strangers  to  sympathy.  Far  from 
sharing  another's  delights  and  sorrows,  a  savage  takes  an  intense 
delight  in  witnessing  a  man  enduring  the  agonies  of  deliberate 
torture.  Cruelty  seems  to  give  him  the  same  thrill  of  joy  that 
sympathetic  assistance  gives  to  a  refined  person. 

How  are  we  to  account  for  this  strange  delight  in  another's 
sufferings  ?  By  noting  the  extreme  coarseness  and  callousness  of 
the  primitive  man's  nerves.  Just  as  some  savages  are  known  to 
have  such  hardened  hides  and  lungs  that  they  can  sleep  naked  in 
a  snowstorm  with  impunity,  where  a  white  man  would  be  sure  to 
perish  of  cold  or  subsequent  pneumonia ;  so  the  savage  requires 
the  coarsest  of  stimulants  to  make  any  impression  on  his  sluggish 
emotions.  The  sight  of  an  enemy  tied  to  a  tree  and  being  flayed 
alive  tickles  his  nerves  by  suggesting  his  own  comfortable  freedom 
in  comparison,  and  by  showing  him  an  enemy  absolutely  in  his 
power;  while  his  imagination  is  not  sufficiently  vivid  to  enable 
him  to  put  himself  in  the  other's  place  to  feel  his  contortions  and 
suppressed  moans  re-echoing  in  his  own  soul. 

And  have  we  not  in  our  very  midst  thousands  of  so-called 
civilised  beings  who  require  stimulants  almost  as  coarse  as  the 
savage  to  amuse  their  dull  imaginations  1 — people  who  would 
hesitate  to  pay  silver  for  a  book,  a  concert,  or  an  art  exhibition, 
but  gladly  give  gold  to  witness  the  execution  of  a  criminal  or  an 
exhibition  of  animals  torturing  one  another  to  death.  To  suppose 
that  such  people  can  ever  fall  in  Love — Romantic  Love — is  more 
than  absurd. 

Children  represent  this  savage  stage  of  the  evolution  of 
sympathy ;  as  their  imagination,  like  all  their  mental  powers,  is 
still  in  embryo.  Nothing  delights  the  average  boy  so  much  as  a 
chance  to  torture  a  beetle,  a  cat,  or  a  dog.  And  Mr.  Galton 
somewhere  refers  to  the  sense  of  blood-curdling  produced  on  him 
and  other  sensitive  persons  in  the  London  Zoological  Gardens  at 
the  sight  of  snakes  devouring  living  animals.  "  Yet,"  he  adds, 
"  I  have  often  seen  people — nurses,  for  instance,  and  children  cf 
all  ages — looking  unconcernedly  and  amusedly  at  the  scene." 

To  substitute  Sympathy  for  this  delight  in  torture — to  arouse 


MODERN  LOVE  149 

the  sluggish  imagination  from  its  thousand  years'  sleep,  and 
quicken  its  sense  of  suffering  in  man  and  animals — is  one  of  the 
greatest  problems  of  moral  culture,  and — so  far  as  man  is 
concerned — forms  one  of  the  keynotes  of  Christianity.  St.  Paul 
bids  us  both  to  bear  one  another's  burdens  and  to  rejoice  with 
one  another.  The  second  part  of  his  injunction,  however,  has 
been  comparatively  neglected,  as  is  best  shown  by  the  circum- 
stance that  we  have  several  terms  to  express  the  sharing  of  sorrow 
(compassion,  pity,  sympathy),  whereas  for  the  sharing  of  joy  there 
is  no  special  noun  in  the  English  language.  The  Germans  have  a 
word  for  it — Mitfreude — yet  it  rarely  occurs  out  of  philosophical 
treatises.  The  word  Sympathy,  which  literally  means  "  suffering 
with,"  has  also  been  most  commonly  used  in  that  sense.  But  it 
is  now  frequently  being  used  in  the  sense  of  sharing  joy  too,  and 
perhaps,  despite  its  etymology,  it  will,  for  lack  of  another  word, 
be  chiefly  used  in  this  sense  in  future.  Even  at  present,  when 
persons  are  spoken  of  as  sympathetic  or  antipathetic,  much  less 
regard  is  paid  to  their  willingness  to  bear  our  burdens  or  share 
our  sorrows  than  to  the  chances  of  their  sharing  in  our  pleasures 
by  having  similar  tastes  and  opinions. 

For  this  change  in  the  meaning  of  Sympathy,  Romantic  Love 
must,  I  believe,  be  held  chiefly  responsible.  To  some  extent,  no 
doubt,  friends  and  relatives  shared  one  another's  joys  before  the 
advent  of  Love.  Yet  even  the  mother — taking  the  most  favour- 
able case — cannot  enter  into  all  her  child's  feelings,  while  to  the 
child  most  of  her  mature  emotions  are  utterly  incomprehensible  ; 
so  that  we  miss  here  that  reciprocation  which  is  the  very  essencs 
of  Sympathy  ;  whereas  a  lover  cannot  even  conceive  a  pleasure 
unless  the  other  shares  it — another  point  in  the  psychology  of 
Modern  Love  to  which  Shakspere  has  given  the  most  poetic 
expression — 

"  Except  I  be  by  Sylvia  in  the  night, 
There  is  no  music  in  the  nightingale." 

Thus  we  see  that  there  are  three  stages  in  the  evolution  of 
Sympathy :  the  first,  in  which  cruelty  neutralises  it ;  the  second, 
in  which  this  universal  enjoyment  of  cruelty,  with  its  attendant 
lack  of  imagination  and  altruistic  feeling,  compelled  moralists  to 
lay  more  stress  on  the  virtue  of  compassion  than  on  the  refining 
pleasures  of  mutual  enjoyment ;  the  third,  the  epoch  of  Romantic 
Love,  in  which  the  positive  side  of  the  emotional  partnership  is 
specially  emphasised,  so  that  a  lover  cannot  pour  forth  a  song  of 
happiness  except  in  the  form  of  a  duo. 


150  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

And  this  brings  us  back  again  to  a  question  left  unanswered 
in  the  section  on  Jealousy.  A  rejected  lover's  deepest  anguish  is 
the  thought  that  "  She  will  now  be  happy  in  another's  arms." 
To  hear  that  she  has  entered  a  convent  and  will  never  enjoy  the 
pleasures  of  Love  denied  him  would  be  his  only  consolation.  Is 
this  an  aberration  of  Sympathy,  or  does  it  mark  its  climax — its 
remorseless  logical  consistency?  The  answer  lies  in  the  second 
suggestion.  Were  Love  an  altruistic  passion,  it  would  be  other- 
wise. He  would  delight  in  her  happiness  under  all  circumstances. 
But  Love  is  selfish — a  double  selfishness;  and  its  sense  of  justice 
demands  that  each  side  be  considered.  "  If  I  cannot  be  happy 
without  her,  how  can  she  without  me?"  The  lover  does  not 
consider  that  the  passion  is  one-sided — he  cannot  fathom  that 
mystery — cannot  understand  why  his  flame,  which  reduces  him  to 
ashes,  is  not  strong  enough  to  set  her  on  fire,  and  were  she  a 
stone  image. 

Pity  and  Love. — According  to  Darwin,  one  of  the  chief  mental 
differences  between  man  and  woman  is  woman's  greater,  tender- 
ness. Of  this  feminine  tenderness  the  world  has  been  able  to 
judge  on  a  vast  scale  during  the  last  two  or  three  years. 

According  to  a  statement  in  Nature,  30,000  ruby  and  topaz 
humming-birds  were  sold  in  London  some  years  ago  in  the  course 
of  one  afternoon,  "  and  the  number  of  West  Indian  and  Brazilian 
birds  sold  by  one  auction-room  in  London  during  the  four  months 
ending  April  1885,  was  404,464,  besides  356,389  Indian  birds, 
without  counting  thousands  of  Impeyan  pheasants,  birds  of 
paradise,"  etc.  A  writer  in  Forest  and  Stream  mentioned  a 
dealer  in  South  Carolina  who  handled  30,000  bird-skins  per 
annum.  "During  four  months  70,000  birds  were  supplied  to 
New  York  dealers  from  a  single  village  on  Long  Island,  and  an 
enterprising  woman  from  New  York  contracted  with  a  Paris 
millinery  firm  to  deliver  during  this  summer  40,000  or  more  skins 
of  birds  at  40  cents  a  piece.  From  Cape  Cod,  one  of  the  haunts 
of  terns  and  gulls,  40,000  of  the  former  birds  were  killed  in  a 
single  season,  so  that  at  points  where  a  few  years  since  these 
beautiful  birds  filled  the  air  with  their  graceful  forms  and  snowy 
plumage,  only  a  few  pairs  now  remain."  "  It  is  estimated  that 
not  less  than  5,000,000  birds  of  all  sorts  were  killed  last  year  for 
purposes  of  ornamentation,"  wrote  Mr.  E.  P.  Powell  in  the  New 
York  Independent.  A  correspondent  of  the  New  York  Evening 
Post  saw  at  an  art  exhibition  a  young  lady,  with  "  nothing  in  her 
face  to  denote  excessive  cruelty,"  who  wore  a  hat  trimmed  with 
"  the  heads  of  over  twenty  little  birds " ;  and  the  same  paper 


MODERN  LOVE  151 

remarked  editorially :  "  No  one  can  tell  how  large  a  bird  can  be 
worn  on  a  woman's  head,  by  walking  in  Fifth  Avenue.  It  is 
necessary  to  take  a  ride  in  a  Second  Avenue  car  to  get  the  full 
effect  of  the  prevailing  fashion.  There  one  may  see  on  the  head- 
gear of  poorer  classes,  and  especially  of  coloured  women,  every 
species  of  the  feathered  kingdom  smaller  than  a  prairie  chicken  or 
a  canvas-back  duck  and  every  colour  of  the  rainbow." 

"  Think  of  women  !  "  exclaims  Diderot ;  "  they  are  miles 
beyond  us  in  sensibility." 

It  was  Science,  edited  by  men,  that  started  the  agitation 
against  woman's  cruel  and  tasteless  fashion — a  fashion  which  not 
one  woman  in  a  hundred  apparently  refused  to  conform  to.  It 
was  Messrs.  J.  A.  Allen,  W.  Dutcher,  G.  B.  Sennett,  and  other 
ornithologists,  who  raised  their  voices  in  behalf  of  the  murdered 
birds,  for  whom  no  woman  seemed  to  have  a  thought  except  Mrs. 
Celia  Thaxter — all  honour  to  her — and  a  small  circle  of  ladies  in 
England.  It  was  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  who  wrote  how  he  felt 
"  the  shame  of  the  wanton  destruction  of  our  singing-birds  to  feed 
the  demands  of  a  barbaric  vanity ;  "  another  man,  Charles  Dudley 
Warner,  who  pertinently  suggested  that  "a  dead  bird  does  not 
help  the  appearance  of  an  ugly  woman,  and  a  pretty  woman  needs 
no  such  adornment." 

That  the  average  woman's  imagination  is  not  sufficiently  refined 
and  quick  to  feel  for  these  winged  poems  of  the  air  is  historically 
proven  by  this  fashion,  which,  characteristically  enough,  was  first 
introduced  by  a  member  of  the  Paris  demi-monde. 

It  has  disappeared  for  the  moment,  but  is  almost  absolutely 
certain  to  reappear  within  five  years. 

But  who,  after  all,  is  responsible  for  this  sluggish  condition  of 
the  feminine  imagination,  this  lack  of  sympathy  for  the  fate  of 
harmless  happy  birds,  who  in  their  domestic  affections  and  love- 
affairs  so  closely  resemble  man?  Is  it  not  the  men  who,  till 
within  a  few  years,  have  refused  to  give  their  daughters  a  rational 
education  ?  It  must  be  so,  for  in  that  sphere  where  woman  has 
been  able  to  educate  herself,  and  where  she  is  queen — in  the 
domestic  circle,  she  does  possess  that  tender  sympathy  which  she 
withholds  from  lower  beings. 

Within  the  range  of  human  affections  woman  manifests  flu  re 
pity,  is  stirred  to  nobler  needs  of  self-sacrifice,  than  man.  Is 
Love  included  in  this  category?  Dryden  tells  us  that  "pity 
melts  the  heart  to  love,"  and  novelists  delight  to  make  their 
heroines  first  refuse  their  suitors  and  subsequently  accept  them 
from  real  Love  born  of  pity.  For  my  part,  I  doubt  this  assumed 


152  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

relationship  between  Pity  and  Love ;  and  I  do  not  believe  that  a 
girl  who  has  refused  a  lover  ordinarily  feels  any  more  pity  for  him 
than  a  cat  does  for  a  mouse,  or  a  person  who  is  all  right  on  a 
steamer  does  for  another  who  is  sea-sick — though  he  be  his  best 
friend.  There  is  an  instinctive  belief  in  the  human  mind  that 
love-sickness  and  sea-sickness  are  never  fatal. 

It  does,  indeed,  very  often  happen — perhaps  in  half  the  cases ; 
it  would  be  interesting  to  have  approximate  statistics  on  the 
subject — that  a  girl  first  refuses  the  man  whose  second  or  third 
offer  she  accepts ;  for,  as  an  anonymous  writer  remarks,  "  women 
are  so  made  (happily  for  men)  that  gratitude,  pity,  the  exquisite 
pleasure  of  pleasing,  the  sweet  surprise  at  finding  themselves 
necessary  to  another's  happiness  .  .  .  altogether  obscure  and  con- 
fuse the  judgment."  But  in  such  cases  there  are  other  factors 
which  probably  influence  the  girl  much  more  than  Pity  does. 
She  is,  in  the  first  place,  largely  influenced  by  this  "exquisite 
pleasure  of  pleasing  " — another  name  for  Pride.  Then  there  is  a 
certain  advantage  to  a  man  in  having  proposed,  even  unsuccess- 
fully ;  for  whenever  subsequently  the  girl  reads  about  Love  she 
will  involuntarily  think  of  him ;  and  thus  his  image  will  become 
associated  with  all  the  pleasure  she  derives  from  Love  stories — 
which  may  prove  the  first  step  for  her — and  a  long  one — into  the 
romantic  passion.  Besides,  to  propose  to  a  girl  is  the  greatest 
compliment  a  man  can  pay  a  girl ;  and  this  cannot  be  without 
influence. 

Thus  it  is  possible  that  Pity,  allied  with  Pride,  association,  and 
flattery,  may  work  a  change  of  feeling  in  a  feminine  mind ;  but 
Pity  alone  will  rarely  lead  her  into  the  realms  of  Cupid.  A  man 
certainly  would  never  dream  of  marrying  from  Pity,  on  seeing  that 
she  loves  him  deeply,  a  woman  for  whom  he  does  not  otherwise 
care.  Nor  should  either  man  or  woman  ever  marry  from  Pity, 
any  more  than  for  money  or  rank.  Love  should  ever  be  the  sole 
guide  to  matrimony. 

Love  at  First  Sight. — La  Bruyere  gives  his  opinion  that  "  the 
love  which  arises  suddenly  takes  longest  to  cure;"  and  that 
"  love  which  grows  slowly  and  by  degrees  resembles  friendship  too 
much  to  be  an  ardent  passion."  Schopenhauer,  too,  asserts  that 
"great  passions,  as  a  rule,  arise  at  first  sight."  He  refers  to 
Shakspere's 

"Who  ever  lov'd  that  lov'd  not  at  first  sight  ? " 

and  then  cites  Mateo  Aleman's  old  Spanish  romance,  Guzman  de 
Alfarache,  in  which,  three  centuries  ago,  the  following  observation 


MODERN  LOVE  153 

was  made :  "  To  fall  in  love  one  does  not  require  much  time  or 
reflection  and  choice ;  all  that  is  needed  is  that  in  that  first  and 
only  sight  there  should  be  a  mutual  suitability  and  harmony,  or 
what  in  common  life  we  call  a  sympathy  of  the  blood,  and  which 
is  due  to  a  special  influence  of  the  stars." 

As  it  is  not  permissible,  in  these  degenerate  days  of  positive 
science,  to  explain  a  thing  by  a  vague  reference  to  poetic  astrology, 
an  attempt  must  be  made  to  account  for  the  possibility  of  Love  at 
first  sight  on  more  prosaic  grounds. 

Physiognomy  furnishes  a  simple  solution  of  the  problem.  In 
every  man's  face  is  painted  his  personal  history,  as  well  as  his 
favourite  and  customary  sphere  of  thoughts  and  feelings.  As  Sir 
Charles  Bell  remarks,  "  Expression  is  to  passion  what  language  is 
to  thought."  The  gift  of  reading  correctly  this  facial  language  of 
passion  is  given  to  different  persons  in  different  degrees,  though 
all  have  some  share  of  it :  and  on  their  more  or  less  accurate 
and  subtle  interpretation  of  the  "  lines  and  frowns  and  wrinkles 
strange  "  in  another's  features  depends  the  art  of  reading  character 
and  being  sympathetically  attracted  or  repulsed,  as  the  case  may 
be.  A  young  man  who  has  unconsciously  associated  certain  peculi- 
arities of  facial  expression  in  his  sisters  or  female  friends  with 
habitual  cheerfulness,  amiability,  and  brightness  will,  on  recog- 
nising similar  features  in  a  new  acquaintance,  take  for  granted 
similar  charms  of  character :  this,  which  is  the  work  of  a  second, 
may  result  in  sympathy  at  first  sight,  which  very  often  is  the 
beginning  of  Romantic  Love. 

Love  at  First  Sight  may  be  inspired  by  this  instinctive  per- 
ception of  beauty  of  character,  i.e.  amiability ;  or  by  the  sight  of 
mere  physical  beauty;  or,  thirdly,  by  Personal  Beauty  in  the 
highest  sense  of  the  word,  uniting  intellectual  fascination  with 
bodily  charms. 

Inasmuch  as  there  are  not  a  few  men  whose  aesthetic  taste  is 
BO  weak  that  they  would  rather  marry  a  useful,  companionable 
girl  and  imagine  her  beautiful,  than  take  a  beauty  and  imagine 
her  useful ;  and  inasmuch  as  there  are  a  great  many  more  amiable 
and  vivacious  girls  in  the  world  than  pretty  ones,  it  happens  that 
in  a  large  number  of  cases  Love  is  inspired  by  the  physiognomic 
interpretation  of  sympathetic  traits  of  character  just  referred  to. 
Hence  plain  girls  need  never  despair  of  finding  husbands.  There 
is  even  a  current  notion  that  the  deepest  passions  are  commonly 
inspired  by  plain  women  who  are  otherwise  attractive.  But  what 
inspires  the  Love  in  these  cases  is  not  so  much  the  woman  a 
amiability — and  certainly  not  her  plainness— as  the  fact  that  the 


164  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

style  of  her  homeliness  is  of  an  opposite  kind  from  the  faults  of 
the  lover,  and  promises  to  neutralise  them  in  the  offspring. 

Plain  and  homely,  moreover,  are  terms  often  applied  to  women 
whose  faces  only  are  so,  while  their  figures  are  sometimes  superb. 
But  a  fine  figure  is  quite  as  essential  a  part  of  Personal  Beauty  as 
a  fine  face,  and  is,  in  the  opinion  of  Schopenhauer,  even  more 
potent  as  a  love-inspirer.  If  the  figure  is  disregarded  in  favour  of 
the  face,  Horn  antic  Love  is  apt  to  become  hyper-romantic,  as  in 
the  days  of  Dante. 

Perhaps  the  largest  number  of  cases  of  Love  at  First  Sight,  so 
called,  are  inspired  by  mere  beaute  du  diable — a  female  "  bud  " 
whose  sole  charm  apparent  is  sparkling  health  and  fragrant, 
dew-bejewelled  freshness.  That  this  kind  of  Love  at  sight, 
which  consists  in  being  dazzled  for  the  moment  by  a  set  of 
regular  features  and  a  pair  of  bright  eyes,  is  often  of  brief  dura- 
tion, does  not  militate  against  the  statement  that  the  deepest 
Love  is  also  born  of  such  a  flash  of  aesthetic  admiration.  An 
incipient  passion  may  be  crushed  by  the  discovery  of  some  dis- 
agreeable trait  in  the  person  who  inspired  it;  but  when,  owing 
to  want  of  early  opportunity  to  discover  unsympathetic  traits, 
Love  has  been  allowed  to  make  some  progress,  the  subsequent 
discovery  of  a  flaw  is  not  nearly  so  serious  a  matter,  for  then 
Master  Cupid  simply  puts  a  daub  of  whitewash  on  it  and  calls  it 
a  beauty-spot. 

Intellect  and  Love. — But,  after  all,  the  deepest  Love  at  Sight, 
and  that  which  gives  promise  of  greatest  permanence,  is  that 
inspired  by  a  handsome  woman  in  whose  face  Intellect  has  written 
its  autograph.  Goethe,  indeed,  has  remarked  that  (( intellect 
cannot  warm  us,  or  inspire  us  with  passion ; "  but  the  view  he 
takes  here  of  the  relations  between  intellect  and  passion  is  obvi- 
ously very  crude  and  superficial  No  man,  of  course,  would  ever 
fall  in  Love  with  a  woman  who  showed  her  intellectuality — as  not 
a  few  do — by  a  parrotlike  repetition  of  encyclopaedic  reading  or 
magazine  epitomes  of  knowledge.  This  gives  evidence  of  only 
one  form  of  intellect,  the  lowest,  namely,  Memory.  It  is  the 
higher  forms — imagination,  wit,  clever  reasoning,  that  constitute 
the  essence  of  intellectual  culture ;  and  though  woman  may  never 
quite  equal  man  in  this  sphere,  such  cases  as  Mme.  de  Stae'l, 
George  Sand,  and  George  Eliot  show  how  much  she  can  accom- 
plish by  means  of  application. 

Now  this  higher  kind  of  intellectual  culture  is  able  to  influence 
the  amorous  feelings  in  two  ways  :  first,  by  refining  and  vivifying 
the  features;  secondly,  by  enabling  a  woman  to  appreciate  her 


MODERN  LOVE  155 

-over's  ambitions  and  afford  him  sympathetic  assistance,  thereby 
awakening  a  responsive  echo  in  his  grateful  mind.  * 

Look  at  Miss  Marbleface  in  yonder  corner,  surrounded  by  a\ 
group  of  admirers.  Everybody  wonders  why  she,  whose  features  S 
might  inspire  a  sculptor,  remains  unmarried  at  twenty-six.  Her 
friends,  indeed,  whisper  that  she  never  even  got  an  offer.  Yet  all  \ 
the  men  to  whom  she  is  introduced  admire  her  immensely — the 
first  evening ;  but  strange  to  say,  after  they  have  seen  her  a  few 
times,  they  are  not  a  bit  jealous  to  leave  her  to  a  new  group  of 
admirers ;  who,  in  turn,  cede  her  to  another.  Her  beauty,  in 
truth,  is  but  skin-deep,  literally ;  the  muscles  under  the  skin  are 
never  vivified  by  an  electric  flash  of  wit  from  the  brain ;  there  is 
nothing  but  marble  features  and  a  stereotyped  smile ;  no  anima- 
tion, no  change  of  expression,  no  Intellect  Were  her  intellect  as 
carefully  cultivated  as  her  features  are  chiselled,  she  would  inspire 
Love,  not  mere  momentary  admiration ;  and  she  would  have  been 
married  six  years  ago  to  a  man  chosen  at  will  from  the  whole 
circle  of  her  acquaintances. 

It  is  easy  to  explain  how  the  absurd  and  fatal  notion  that  intel- 
lectual application  mars  women's  peculiar  beauty  and  lessens  the 
feminine  graces  in  general  must  have  arisen.  The  inference  seems 
to  follow  logically  from  the  two  undeniable  premises  that  pretty 
girls  very  often  are  insipid,  and  intellectual  women  commonly  are 
plain.  But  this  is  only  another  case  of  putting  the  cart  before  the 
horse.  [Pretty  girls,  on  the  one  hand,  are  so  rare  that  they  are 
almost  sure  to  be  spoiled  by  flattery./'  They  receive  so  much  atten- 
tion that  they  have  no  time  for  study;  and  ambitious  mothers 
take  them  into  society  prematurely,  where  they  get  married  before 
their  intellectual  capacities — which  sometimes  are  excellent — have 
had  time  to  unfold.  Ugly  girls,  on  the  other  hand,  being 
neglected  by  the  men,  have  to  while  away  their  time  with  books, 
music,  art,  etc.,  and  thus  they  become  bright  and  entertaining. 
Therefore  it  is  not  the  intellect  that  makes  them  ugly,  but  the 
ugliness  that  makes  them  intellectual. 

The  culture  that  can  be  compressed  into  a  single  lifetime  un- 
fortunately does  not  suffice  to  modify  the  bony  and  cartilaginous 
parts  of  the  human  face  sufficiently  to  change  homeliness  into 
beauty ;  but  the  muscles  can  be  mobilised,  the  expression  quickened 
and  beautified  by  an  individual's  efforts  at  culture ;  hence  some  of 
these  reputed  plain  intellectual  women,  in  moments  when  they  are 
excited,  become  more  truly  fascinating,  with  all  their  badly-chiselled 
features,  than  any  number  of  cold  marble  faces.  If  men  only  knew 
it ! — but  they  are  afraid  of  them — the  average  men  are — because 


156  BOM  ANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

they  do  not  constantly  wish  to  be  reminded  of  their  own  mental 
shortcomings  in  a  tournament  of  wit,  pleasantry,  or  erudition. 

Even  Schopenliauer,  who  was  convinced  that  women  are  too 
stupid  to  appreciate  a  man's  intellect,  if  abnormal,  held  that 
women,  on  the  contrary,  gain  an  advantage  in  Love  by  cultivating 
their  minds ;  adding  that  it  is  owing  to  the  appreciation  of  this 
fact  that  mothers  teach  their  daughters  music,  languages,  etc. ; 
thus  artificially  padding  out  their  minds,  as  on  occasion  they  do 
parts  of  the  body. 

No  doubt,  as  a  rule,  women  are  more  influenced  in  love-affairs 
by  a  man  who  excels  in  athletic  qualities  of  manly  energy  than  by 
one  of  intellectual  supereminence.  But  the  adoration  of  women 
for  a  Liszt,  a  Rubinstein,  and  other  men  of  genius,  whose  eminence 
lies  in  a  department  that  has  been  made  accessible  to  women  for 
centuries,  shows  what  might  be  if  women  were  trained  in  other 
spheres  of  human  activity  and  knowledge. 

Regarding  the  mental  padding,  however,  we  might  continue  in 
the  old  pessimist's  vein  by  saying  that  it  is  a  trick  which  has  had 
its  day.  Men  do  not  marry  girls  quite  so  blindly  as  in  the  days 
when  Romantic  Love  was  a  novelty.  They  keep  their  eyes  open ; 
and  when  they  find  that  their  girl's  musical  "  culture  "  consists  in 
the  mechanical  drumming  of  three  pieces,  and  that  her  other 
"  accomplishments "  are  similar  shams,  they  are  apt  to  take  their 
throbbing  hearts  and  put  them  into  a  refrigerator  until  the  young 
lady  has  become  a  faded,  harmless  old  maid,  still  drumming  her 
three  pieces  on  the  piano.  The  fact  that  so  many  mothers  persist 
in  thus  "padding"  their  daughters'  minds,  instead  of  educating 
them  properly,  is  largely  responsible  for  the  ever-increasing  number 
of  self-conscious  and  disgusted  bachelors  in  the  world. 

The  example  of  Aspasia  illustrates  both  the  physical  advantages 
beauty  derives  from  intellectual  culture — through  the  refinement 
of  expression — and  the  emotional  advantages  a  woman  secures  by 
being  able  to  sympathise  intelligently  with  her  lover's  or  husband's 
enterprises.  Nothing  more  irresistibly  fascinates  a  man  than 
genuine  questioning  interest  shown  by  a  woman  in  his  life-work. 
Or,  as  Mr.  Hamerton  puts  it,  "  the  most  exquisite  pleasure  the 
masculine  mind  can  ever  know,  is  that  of  being  looked  upon  by  a 
feminine  intelligence  with  clear  sight  and  affection  at  the  same 
time."  But  on  this  topic  Mr.  Mill  has  discoursed  so  enthusiasti- 
cally in  his  Subjection  of  Women  that  anything  that  might  be 
added  here  could  be  little  more  than  a  faint  echo  of  his  persuasive 
eloquence,  tinged  though  it  be  with  true  lovers'  exaggeration. 

Goethe  illustrated  his  maxim  that  "  intellect  cannot  warm  us 


MODERN  LOVE  157 

or  inspire  us  with  passion  "  by  marrying  a  pretty,  brainless  doll  of 
whom  he  soon  got  heartily  tired.  Heine  followed  his  example  by 
marrying  a  Parisian  labouring  girl  who,  like  Madame  Racine,  prob- 
ably never  read  her  husband's  writings.  And  in  his  Unterwelt  he 
laments  his  "verfehlte  Liebe,  verfehltes  Leben" — his  mistaken 
love  and  wasted  life. 

Why  did  the  ancient  Greeks  neglect  their  women?  Why  did 
they  remain  strangers  to  Love  and  seek  refuge  in  Friendship? 
Their  women  were  modest,  domestic,  good  mothers  and  wives;  but 
they  lacked  one  thing,  and  that  was  Intellect. 

GALLANTRY   AND   SELF-SACRIFICE 

Primitive  tribes  have  a  delightfully  simple  way  of  arranging 
their  division  of  labour.  The  men  do  the  hunting  and  carry  on 
wars,  the  women  do  everything  else.  If  a  warrior  on  "moving 
day  "  should  say  to  his  wife  and  daughters  :  "  See  here,  this  will 
never  do  for  me  to  have  nothing  but  my  weapons  and  my  pipe, 
while  you  carry  the  babies,  the  cooking  utensils,  the  remnants  of 
the  game,  and  the  tent :  let  me  help  you  ! " — if  he  should  say  this, 
his  comrades  would  consider  him  crazy,  or  rather,  possessed  of  a 
demon,  and  would  burn  two  or  three  persons  at  the  stake  for. 
having  bewitched  him. 

Gallantry,  in  other  words,  is  unknown  to  savages  either  between 
lovers,  or,  in  a  general  sense,  towards  all  women.  Nor  is  it  known 
to  semi-civilised  peoples.  Among  the  nomadic  Arab  tribes  of  the 
Sahara  the  wife  has  to  do  all  the  work  unless  her  husband  is  rich 
enough  to  own  a  slave ;  and  among  the  poorer  Bedouins  the  hus- 
band traverses  the  desert  comfortably  seated  on  his  camel,  while 
his  wife  plods  along  behind  on  foot,  loaded  with  her  bed,  her 
kitchen  utensils,  and  her  child  on  top. 

The,  ancient  Greeks  were  not  so  ungallant  as  these  peoples 
towards  their  women,  as  they  had  slaves  to  do  their  hard  work ; 
but  the  constant  devoted  attention  and  desire  to  please  which  con- 
stitute modern  Gallantry  did  not,  as  we  have  seen,  exist  among 
them.  Among  the  Romans  we  find  traces — but  traces  only — of 
this  virtue.  Medieval  Gallantry  reached  its  extremes  in  the 
witches'  fires  on  the  one  side,  and  the  grotesque  performances  of 
the  knight-errants  on  the  other.  The  intermediate  ground  appar- 
ently remained  uncultivated,  except  during  the  brief  period  of 
chivalrous  poetry,  and  then  only  in  the  highest  classes.  Wher- 
ever, in  short,  Romantic  Love  was  absent,  Gallantry,  as  one  of  its 
ingredients,  was  unknown. 


158  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Coming  to  modern  times,  we  see  the  same  parallelism  between 
general  Gallantry  and  the  freedom  granted  to  the  young  to  form 
Love-matches. 

In  France,  Germany,  Italy,  the  women  still  have  to  do  the 
hardest  field  work,  though  the  men  assist.  The  French,  indeed, 
who  systematically  suppress  Romantic  Love,  are  apparently  the 
most  gallant  nation  in  the  world.  But  there  is  a  general  agree- 
ment among  tourists  that  in  real  Gallantry,  which  calls  for  self- 
sacrificing  actions  and  not  mere  polite  words  and  bows,  the  French 
are  inferior  to  all  other  European  nations.  It  is  in  England  and 
America  that  true  general  Gallantry,  like  true  Romantic  Love, 
flourishes  most.  In  America,  indeed,  owing  to  the  former  scarcity 
of  women,  Gallantry  was  for  a  time  carried  to  a  ludicrous  excess, 
almost  reminding  one  of  the  days  of  Don  Quixote ;  as  in  that  story 
of  the  Western  miners  who  surrounded  an  emigrant's  waggon  and 
insisted  on  his  "  trotting  out "  his  wife ;  which  being  done  by  the 
trembling  man,  who  feared  the  worst,  the  "roughs"  passed  round 
the  hat  and  collected  a  large  sum  of  gold  for  the  woman.  Perhaps 
American  women  still  are,  as  we  read  in  Daisy  Miller,  "the  most 
exacting  in  the  world  and  the  least  endowed  with  a  sense  of 
indebtedness."  But  the  constant  sight  in  New  York  and  else- 
where of  street-cars  in  which  every  man  has  a  seat  while  every 
woman  is  standing,  seems  to  indicate  that  there  is  a  reaction 
which  may  go  to  the  opposite  extreme.  But  after  a  while  the 
pendulum  will  doubtless  swing  back  to  the  middle  and  remain 
stationary;  and  this  will  be  in  the  new  golden  age  when  men 
will  always  give  up  their  seats  to  old  and  infirm  women,  to  pretty 
girls,  and  to  all  the  others  who  display  truly  refined  instincts 
and  good  taste  by  abjuring  crinolines,  bustles,  high  heels,  stuffed 
birds  on  their  hats,  and  other  "ornaments"  fatal  to  Personal 
Beauty. 

From  the  facts  thus  hastily  sketched  we  may  safely  infer  that, 
as  we  saw  in  the  case  of  Sympathy  with  another's  joys,  so  again 
with  Gallantry,  what  was  born  as  a  trait  of  Romantic  Love  was 
subsequently  transferred  to  the  social  and  domestic  relations 
of  men  and  women  in  general.  Had  Romantic  Love  done  nothing 
more  than  this,  it  would  deserve  to  rank  among  the  most  refining 
influences  in  modern  civilisation. 

Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  existing  illustration  of  the  way  in 
which  Lovers'  Gallantry  may  assume  a  general  form,  is  to  be  found 
in  Mr.  Ruskin's  recent  confession  regarding  girls :  "  My  primary 
thought  is  how  to  serve  them  and  make  them  happy ;  or  if  they 
could  use  me  for  a  plank-bridge  over  a  stream,  or  set  me  up  for  a 


MODERN  LOVE  159 

post  to  tie  a  swing  to,  or  anything  of  the  sort  not  requiring  me  to 
talk,  I  should  be  always  quite  happy  in  such  a  promotion." 

This  reads  precisely  like  Heine's  poem  in  which  the  lover  wishes 
he  were  his  mistress's  footstool,  or  again  her  needle-cushion,  that 
he  might  experience  the  delights  of  pain  inflicted  by  her  foot  or 
hand. 

Such  excess  of  amorous  Gallantry  is  a  favourite  theme  for 
poetic  hyperbole,  and  it  hardly  can  be  exaggerated  ;  for  the  lover 
really  does  entertain  such  wishes.  With  him,  romance  is  realism. 

No  slave  could  be  so  meek  and  humble,  no  well-trained  dog  so 
obedient  as  the  amorous  swain.  Again  and  again  will  he,  without 
a  moment's  hesitation,  plunge  into  a  wintry  stream  and  triumphantly 
snap  up  and  bring  back  to  her  the  chip  she  has  thrown  in  to  amuse 
herself. 

Active  and  Passive  Desire  to  Please. — "  Love,  studious  how  to 
please"  (Dryden),  has  two  ways  of  accomplishing  its  purpose — one 
passive,  one  active.  Women,  owing  to  their  prescribed  Coyness, 
are  not  allowed  to  indulge  in  actions  that  would  imply  a  desire  to 
please  a  suitor,  except  in  the  later  stages  of  Courtship,  when  all  is 
settled  or  understood.  Hence  their  desire  to  please  can  only  show 
itself  passively  in  their  efforts  to  make  their  personal  appearance 
attractive  to  the  lover.  Nor  are  men  indifferent  to  this  passive 
phase  of  Gallantry.  As  nothing  so  fills  a  man  with  Pride  as  the 
thought  that  She,  a  paragon  of  beauty,  adorns  herself  so  carefully 
all  for  his  delight ;  so  in  turn  he  feels  it  incumbent  on  him  to 
follow  her  example.  Even  the  habitually  slovenly  become  dandies 
for  the  moment,  brush  their  hair,  buy  a  new  hat  and  clothes  ;  the 
lazy  become  industrious,  the  cowards  assume  heroic  airs  and  strut 
about  like  tragedians — 

"  I  was  the  laziest  creature, 
The  most  unprofitable  sign  of  nothing, 
The  veriest  drone,  and  slept  away  my  life 
Beyond  the  dormouse,  till  I  was  in  love  1 
And  now  I  can  outwake  the  nightingale, 
Out  watch  an  usurer,  and  out- walk  him  too, 
Stalk  like  a  ghost  that  haunted  'bout  a  treasure, 
And  all  that  fancied  treasure,  it  is  love." — BEN  JONSON. 

Active  Gallantry  has  been  sufficiently  characterised  in  the  fore- 
going pages.  It  is  that  form  of  the  Desire  to  Please  which  readily 
merges  into  Self-Sacrifice.  A  man  who  would  never  dream  of 
exposing  himself  to  the  slightest  danger  in  his  own  behalf  will,  if 
his  sweetheart  expresses  admiration  of  a  flower  growing  near  a 
dangerous  precipice,  rush  to  pluck  it  with  an  audacity  which  may 


160  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

cost  him  his  life.  A  fatal  case  of  this  sort  occurred  not  long  ago  on 
the  Hudson  River  near  New  York.  A  man's  life  thrown  away  for 
the  slight  sesthetic  gratification  to  be  derived  by  his  love  from  the 
sight  and  fragrance  of  a  flower  ! 

How  frequently,  again,  do  lovers  sacrifice  their  family  bonds, 
the  love  of  parents  and  relatives,  as  well  as  rank  and  fortune,  for 
the  sake  of  the  romantic  passion  ! 

A  mother  willingly  dies  in  defence  of  her  offspring's  life.  But 
will  she,  like  Romeo,  drink  the  apothecary's  poisonous  draught  over 
the  corpse  of  her  dead  darling '?  JS~o,  herein  again  Romantic  Love 
is  the  deepest  of  the  passions. 

Feminine  Devotion. — Self- Sacrifice  is  one  of  the  traits  of 
Romantic  Love  which  may  remain  unaltered  and  unweakened  in 
conjugal  affection.  "Those  who  have  traced  the  course  of  the 
wives  of  the  poor,"  says  Mr.  Lecky,  "and  of  many  who,  though  in 
narrowed  circumstances,  can  hardly  be  called  poor,  will  probably 
admit  that  in  no  other  class  do  we  so  often  find  entire  lives  spent 
in  daily  persistent  self-denial,  in  the  patient  endurance  of  countless 
trials,  in  the  ceaseless  and  deliberate  sacrifice  of  their  own  enjoy- 
ments to  the  wellbeing  or  the  prospects  of  others." 

It  is  in  Wagner's  music-dramas  that  the  modern  ideal  of  feminine 
devotion  unto  death  has  found  its  most  stirring  embodiment. 
Elizabeth,  having  lost  her  Tannhauser,  thanks  to  the  allurements 
of  Venus,  dies  of  a  broken  heart;  Senta,  realising  that  only  by  her 
self-sacrifice  can  the  unhappy  Dutchman  be  released  from  his  ter- 
rible doom  of  eternally  sailing  the  stormy  seas  until  he  should  find 
a  woman  faithful  to  him  unto  death,  tears  herself  away  from  her 
family  and  plunges  into  the  ocean.  Isolde  sings  her  death-song 
over  the  body  of  Tristan ;  and  Briinnhilde  immolates  herself  on 
Siegfried's  funeral  pyre.  Wagner's  theory  of  the  music-drama  was 
a  theory  of  Love  in  which  each  lover  sacrifices  selfish  idiosyncrasies 
in  order  to  produce  a  happy  union  in  marriage. 

Mr.  Mill,  forgetting  the  difference  between  masculine  maltreat- 
ment of  women,  and  voluntary  female  self-denial,  thought  it 
expedient  to  sneer  at  the  exaggerated  self-abnegation  which  is  the 
present  artificial  ideal  of  feminine  character;  and  those  unsexed 
viragoes  who  wish  to  "reform"  women  by  robbing  them  of  all 
womanly  attributes  and  converting  them  into  caricatures  of  mas- 
culinity, re-echo  Mill's  sneer  in  shrill  chorus.  Women,  they  shout, 
must  no  longer  waste  their  best  years  in  staying  at  home,  educating 
their  children  and  taking  care  of  their  husbands.  These  brutes 
have  been  caressed  and  fondled  long  enough  ;  the  time  has  come 
for  women  to  be  manly  and  independent.  Let  them  take  away 


MODERN  LOVE  161 

from  men  the  employments,  of  which  even  now  there  are  not 
enough  for  three-fourths  of  the  men  ;  let  them  thus  drive  another 
20  per  cent  of  men  and  women  into  celibacy  because  the  men 
cannot  afford  any  longer  to  marry.  Let  the  women  strip  off  their 
artificial  air  of  domestic  refinement  by  mingling  with  the  foul- 
mouthed,  tobacco-reeking  crowds  and  making  political  stump 
speeches;  or  .by  visiting  the  loathsome  criminals  in  prisons,  treating 
them  to  cakes  and  flowers  and  other  methods  of  feminine  reform, 
so  that  when  set  free  they  may  be  eager  to  do  something  which 
will  bring  them  back  to  their  cakes  and  flowers  !  The  children 
meanwhile  being  left  at  home  in  charge  of  coarse,  ignorant,  careless 
servants,  copying  their  manners,  and  the  husband  compelled  to 
seek  companionship  at  the  club,  or  much  worse. 

How  the  selfish  husband  will  wince  under  this  cold  neglect  and 
retaliation — he  who  never  does  anything  but  amuse  himself  while 
his  wife  toils  at  home;  who  never  risks  his  life  in  war  for  his  wife 
and  children  ;  who  never  toils  at  his  desk  from  morn  to  night,  to 
earn  the  daily  bread  of  all  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow ;  who  never 
goes  to  lunatic  asylums  from  overwork  and  worry  !  How  sly  in 
man  to  set  up  his  "artificial  ideal  of  woman's  self-abnegation," 
while  he  is  having  such  a  good  time  !  But  why  try  to  paint  in 
weak  prose  the  hideousness  of  man's  selfish  conduct,  when 
Shakspere  has  done  it  in  immortal  verse  1 

"  Thy  husband  is  thy  lord,  thy  life,  thy  keeper, 
Thy  head,  tliy  sovereign  ;  one  that  cares  for  thee, 
And  for  thy  maintenance  commits  his  body 
To  painful  labour  both  by  sea  and  land, 
To  watch  the  night  in  storms,  the  day  in  cold, 
Whilst  thou  liest  warm  at  home,  secure  and  safe; 
And  craves  no  other  tribute  at  thy  hands 
But  love,  fair  looks  and  true  obedience ; 
Too  little  payment  for  so  great  a  debt." 

There  is  another  very  curious  aspect  of  Self-Sacrifice  which  will 
be  fully  discussed  in  the  chapter  on  Schopenhauer's  Theory  of  Love, 
but  which  may  be  stated  here,  without  comment,  that  the  reader 
may  reflect  on  the  pessimist's  paradox.  Schopenhauer  held  that 
Love  is  based  on  the  possession  by  the  lovers  of  traits  which 
mutually  complement  each  other.  In  the  children  these  incon- 
gruous traits  will  so  neutralise  each  other  as  to  produce  a  har- 
monious result ;  but  in  the  life  of  the  parents  they  will  produce 
only  discords.  True  love,  therefore,  as  he  claims,  rarely  results  in 
a  happy  conjugal  life :  Love  causes  the  parents  to  sacrifice  their 
mutual  happiness  to  the  welfare  of  their  offspring. 


162  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Meanwhile  it  may  be  stated  that  France  offers  a  curious 
confirmation  of  Schopenhauer's  theory,  not  noted  by  himself. 
Romantic  Love,  it  is  well  known,  hardly  exists  in  France  as  a 
motive  to  marriage,  being  systematically  suppressed  and  craftily 
annihilated.  Nevertheless,  as  many  observers  attest,  the  French 
commonly  lead  a  happy  family  life.  But  look  at  the  offspring, 
at  the  birth-rate,  the  lowest  in  Europe ;  look  at  the  puny  men, 
at  the  women,  among  whom  there  is  hardly  a  single  beauty 
in  all  the  land.  In  a  word,  whereas  Love  sacrifices,  according  to 
Schopenhauer,  the  parents  to  the  children,  the  French  sacrifice  the 
offspring,  and  Love  itself,  to  the  happiness  of  the  individuals, 
married  according  to  motives  of  personal  expediency. 

EMOTIONAL  HYPERBOLE 

11 1  loved  Ophelia  :  forty  thousand  brothers 
Could  not,  with  all  their  quantity  of  love, 
Make  up  my  sum." 

"It  is  a  strange  thing,"  says  Bacon,  "to  note  the  excess  of  tLis 
passion,  and  how  it  braves  the  nature  and  value  of  things  by  this,, 
that  the  speaking  in  a  perpetual  hyperbole  is  comely  in  nothing 
but  in  love." 

It  is  the  nature  of  all  passions  to  exaggerate  :  and  Love,  being 
of  all  passions  the  most  violent,  exaggerates  the  most — more  even 
than  Hate,  which  alone  competes  with  Love  in  the  power  to  tinge 
every  object  with  the  colour  of  its  own  spectacles.  The  lover's 
constant  sigh  is  for  something  stronger  than  a  superlative ;  and  to 
the  limit  between  the  sublime  and  the  ridiculous  he  is  absolutely 
blind.  Like  Schumann,  every  lover  calls  his  Clara  "  Clarissima," 
and  of  two  superlative  facts  he  is  quite  certain :  That  she  is  the 
most  wonderful  being  ever  created ;  and  that  his  passion  is  the 
deepest  ever  felt  by  mortal 

"  Transparent  heretics,  be  burnt  for  liars ! 
One  fairer  than  my  love  !    The  all-seeing  sun 
Ne'er  saw  her  match  since  first  the  world  begun." 

SHAKSPKRB. 

If  you  try  to  convince  him  that  others  have  loved  as  ardently — • 
and  ceased  to  love,  he  will  smile  a  cynical  smile  and  then  close  hii 
eyes  and  declaim  melodramatically — 

"  And  I  will  luve  thee  still,  my  dear, 
Till  a'  the  seas  gang  dry — 
Till  a'  the  seas  gang  dry,  my  dear, 
And  the  rocks  melt  wi'  the  sun." — BURNS. 


MODERN  LOVE  1«3 

In  such  hyperbolic  effusions  a  lover  sees  no  exaggeration,  for 
they  describe  his  feelings  and  convictions  precisely  as  they  are. 

"  What  we  mortals  call  romantic, 
And  always  envy  though  we  deem  it  frantic  "  (BYEON) 

is  to  him  bare  reality,  nothing  more.     Romeo  expresses  his  real 
wish  for  the  moment  when  he  says — 

"  0  that  I  were  a  glove  upon  that  hand 
That  I  might  touch  that  cheek  ; " 

Biron  really  feels  that 

"  O,  if  the  streets  were  paved  with  thine  eyes 
Her  feet  were  much  too  dainty  for  such  tread.** 

And  erery  lover  would  agree  with  Coleridge  that 

"  Her  very  frowns  are  fairer  far 
Than  smiles  of  other  maidens  are." 

"The  air  I  breathe  in  a  room  empty  of  you  is  unhealthy," 
wrote  Keats  to  his  sweetheart :  and  Burns,  in  the  sketch  of  his 
first  love,  thus  describes  the  emotional  hypersesthesia  produced  by 
Love  :  "  I  didn't  know  myself  why  the  tones  of  her  voice  made 
my  heart-strings  thrill  like  an  ^Eolian  harp,  and  particularly  why 
my  pulse  beat  such  a  furious  rattan  when  I  looked  and  fingered 
over  her  little  hand  to  pick  out  the  cruel  nettle-stings  and 
thistles." 

This  is  the  true  ecstasy  of  Love — the  most  delicious  and 
thrilling  emotion  of  which  the  human  soul  is  capable.  Nor  is  it 
necessary  to  be  a  poet  to  feel  it.  While  in  Love  even  a  coarser- 
grained  man  "  feels  the  blood  of  the  violet,  the  clover,  and  the 
lily  in  his  veins  "  (Emerson).  But  if  Jealousy  rouses  him,  it  is 
flower-blood  no  longer  that  courses  in  his  veins,  nor  human  blood, 
but  vengeful  Spanish  wine.  It  is  then  that  Love's  intoxication 
reaches  its  climax  :  delirious  ecstasy  followed  by  angry  waves  of 
dire  despair,  rocking  and  tossing  the  unhappy  victim  till  he  is  pale 
and  sick  as  death. 

Like  other  drunkards,  the  Love-intoxicated  youth  sees  and 
i'eels  everything  double.  His  darling  seems  doubly  beautiful,  and 
all  his  joys  and  sorrows  are  doubled  in  intensity.  And,  like  other 
drunkards,  he  imagines  that  all  the  world  is  drunk  and  reeling ; 
whereas  the  rapid  oscillation  of  surrounding  objects  between  the 
rosy  hue  of  hope  and  the  gray  cloud  of  doubt,  is  all  in  his  own 
mind. 

How  this  erotic  intoxication  multiplies  the  lover's  courage  and 


164  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

confidence  in  his  success  !  The  most  insignificant  smile  raises 
him  over  all  obstacles  to  the  summit  of  his  hopes,  as  easily  as  a 
cloud-shadow  climbs  a  mountain  side  o'er  treetops,  rocks,  and 
snowy  walls. 

How,  on  her  part,  it  magnifies  his  heroism,  his  genius, 
converting  the  most  insipid  commonplace  into  an  immortal 
epigram,  full  of  wit  and  wisdom  ! 

That  Lovers'  Hyperbole  is  nothing  but  Love- intoxication 
shows  itself  also  in  the  ludicrous  tasks  they  undertake  when  under 
the  spell.  Who  but  a  lover  would  ever  attempt  to  gild  refined 
gold,  to  paint  the  lily  white,  the  sky  blue  1  Who  mix  up  physi- 
ology, astronomy,  gastronomy,  in  such  an  absurd  way  as  in 
"  sweet-heart,"  "  honey-moon,"  etc.  ? 

And  when,  during  the  "  honey-moon,"  the  lover  recovers  from 
his  intoxication,  how  surprised  he  looks,  how  he  rubs  his  eyes  and 
wonders  where  the  deuce  he  has  been  !  He  remembers  Ovid's 
caution  that  after  wine  every  woman  seems  beautiful;  he 
remembers  something  about  seeing  "  Helen's  beauty  in  a  brow  of 
Egypt."  And  the  girl  by  his  side — he  thought  she  was  Helen  ; 
but  now,  "really — this  is  most  extraordinary:  just  look  at  that 
large  mouth,  and  that  snub-nose — well,  I  knew  she  had  it,  and 
thought  I  loved  her  all  the  more  for  this  imperfection,  which 
proved  her  human  and  not  a  goddess :  yet,  by  Jove,  I  almost 
wish  ...  in  fact,  I  quite  wish,  her  mouth  was  smaller  and  her 
nose  larger." 

Poor  deluded  youth  !  He  was  taken  in  by  Cupid's  favourite 
trick  of  dazzling  a  lover  with  a  pair  of  brown  or  blue  orbs,  till  he 
can  see  nothing  else.  For  this  girl,  beyond  question,  has  a  pair 
of  eyes  which  Venus  might  envy — mid-ocean-blue,  with  a  dewdrop 
sparkle,  and  a  mischievous  expression  that  is  more  commonly 
found  in  brown  eyes ;  and  these  deep-blue  eyes  are  framed  in 
with  black  brows  and  long  black  lashes,  without  which  no  eyes 
are  ever  perfect,  whatever  their  colour.  It  was  these  expressive 
orbs,  this  visible  music  of  the  spheres,  that  ravished  all  his  senses 
and  made  him  blind  to  every  other  feature  of  her  countenance. 

Thus  we  see  how  Love  comes  to  be  blind.  One  feature — most 
commonly  the  eyes — dazes  the  victim  so  completely  that  all  the 
other  features  are  seen  but  vaguely  as  in  a  dream;  while  the 
imagination  is  ever  busy  in  chiselling  them  into  harmony  with  the 
fine  eyes.  And  it  is  only  after  marriage,  or  assured  possession, 
that  the  other  features  emerge  from  their  blurred  vagueness,  and 
are  found  less  perfect  than  the  fond  imagination  had  painted  them. 

In  this  eagerness  of  Love  to  see  only  superlative  excellence,  and 


MODERN  LOVE  165 

its  disposition  to  imagine  a  thing  perfect  if  it  is  not,  we  get  a 
deep  insight  into  the  mission  and  raison  d'etre  of  this  passion. 
If  women  and  men  would  only  try  to  live  up  to  Love's  exalted 
ideal  of  personal  perfection — and  most  persons  could  be  50  per 
cent  more  beautiful,  if  they  attended  to  the  laws  of  hygiene  and 
cultivated  their  minds — what  a  lovely  planet  this  would  be  ! 

Why  have  so  many  of  the  greatest  men  of  genius  been  unhappy 
in  their  Love  and  Marriage  ?  Because  they  had  in  their  minds 
the  loveliest  visions  of  possible  feminine  perfection,  but  did  not 
find  them  realised  in  life.  For  a  while  their  pre-eminently  strong 
imaginations  helped  them  to  keep  up  the  illusion ;  but  the  truth 
would  out  at  last ;  and  in  the  pangs  of  disappointment  they  threw 
themselves  upon  the  poetic  device  of  Hyperbole,  and  tried  to 
console  themselves  by  painting  the  images  of  perfection  which  did 
not  exist  in  life. 

Love,  it  is  true,  is  not  the  only  theme  which  they  have 
embellished  with  the  ornaments  of  Hyperbole.  A  wonderful 
example  of  non-erotic  Hyperbole  occurs  in  Macbeth — 

"  Will  all  great  Neptune's  ocean  wash  this  blood 
Clean  from  my  hand  ?    No,  this  my  hand  will  rather 
The  multitudinous  seas  incarnadine, 
Making  the  green  one  red." 

But  as  a  rule  the  finest  specimens  of  poetic  imagery  are  to  be 
found  in  erotic  Hyperbole  ;  and  it  seems  most  strange  that  Gold- 
smith, who  had  so  deep  an  insight  into  Love,  does  not  mention 
this  variety  at  all  in  his  essay  on  Hyperbole. 

Love,  says  Emerson,  is  "  the  deification  of  persons " ;  and 
though  the  poet,  like  every  other  lover,  "  beholding  his  maiden, 
half-knows  that  she  is  not  verily  that  which  he  worships,"  this 
does  not  prevent  him  from  idealising  her  portrait,  and  sketching 
her  as  he  would  like  to  have  her.  A  few  additional  specimens  of 
such  poetic  Hyperbole  may  fitly  close  this  chapter— 

SHAKSPERE — 

"  She  is  mine  own, 
And  I  as  rich  in  having  such  a  jewel 
As  twenty  seas,  if  all  their  sand  were  pearl, 
The  water  nectar,  and  the  rocks  pure  gold." 

SOUTHWELL — 

"  A  honey  shower  rains  from  her  lips.* 

MAELOWE — 

"  0,  thou  art  fairer  than  the  evening  air 
Clad  in  the  beauty  of  a  thousand  stars." 


160  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Ani  again — 

*•'  Many  would  praise  the  sweet  smell  as  she  past, 
When  'twas  the  odour  which  her  breath  forth  cast; 
And  there  for  honey  bees  have  sought  in  vain, 
And,  beat  from  thence,  have  lighted  there  again." 

Or,  as  Lamb  puts  it,  lovers  sometimes 

"borrow  language  of  dislike  j 
And  instead  of  '  dearest  Miss,' 
Jewel,  honey,  sweetheart,  bliss, 
And  those  forms  of  old  admiring, 
Call  her  cockatrice  and  siren, 
Basilisk  and  all  that's  evil, 
Witch,  hyena,  mermaid,  devil, 
Ethiop,  wench,  and  blackamoor, 
Monkey,  ape,  and  twenty  more  ; 
Friendly  traitress,  loving  foe,— 
Not  that  she  is  truly  so, 
But  no  other  way  they  know 
A  contentment  to  express, 
Borders  so  upon  excess, 
That  they  do  not  rightly  wot, 
Whether  it  be  pain  or  not. " 

MIXED   MOODS   AND   PARADOXES 

"  That  they  do  not  rightly  wot,  whether  it  be  pain  or  not." 
That  is  the  keynote  of  Modern  Love. 

To  a  superficial  Anakreon,  who  knows  but  its  rapturous  phase, 
Love  is  all  honey  and  moonshine.  The  celibate  Spinoza,  too, 
ignorant  of  the  agonies  of  Love,  denned  it  as  Icetitia  concomitante 
idea  causce  external — a  pleasure  accompanied  by  the  idea  of  its 
external  cause.  Burton,  on  the  other  hand,  claims  Love  as  "a 
species  of  melancholy  "  ;  and  Cowley  sings — 

"  A  mighty  pain  to  love  it  is, 
And  'tis  a  pain  that  pain  to  miss  ; 
But  of  all  pains  the  greatest  pain 
It  is  to  love,  but  love  in  vain. " 

The  poets  generally  have  taken  a  less  one-sided  view  of  the 
matter  by  depicting  Love  under  a  thousand  images,  as  a  mysterious 
mixture  of  joy  and  sadness,  of  agony  and  delight. 

So  Bailey — 

"The  sweetest  joy,  the  wildest  woe  is  love." 
PRYDEN — 

"Pains  of  love  be  sweeter  far 
Than  all  other  pleasures  are." 


MODERN  LOVE  167 

FLETCHER — 

"  Thou  bitter  sweet,  easing  disease 

How  dost  thou  by  displeasing  please  I" 
MIDDLETON — 

'  Love  is  ever  sick,  and  yet  is  never  dying ; 
Love  is  ever  true,  .and  yet  is  ever  lying ; 
Love  does  doat  in  liking,  and  is  mad  in  loathing, 
Love,  indeed,  is  anything,  yet  indeed  is  nothing.* 

DKAYTON — 

"Amidst  an  ocean  of  delight 
For  pleasure  to  be  starved." 

•'  'Tis  nothing  to  be  plagued  in  hell 

But  thus  in  heaven  tormented." 
CONSTABLE — 

"To  live  in  hell,  and  heaven  to  behold, 
To  welcome  life,  and  die  a  living  death, 
To  sweat  with  heat,  and  yet  be  freezing  cold. 
To  grasp  at  stars,  and  lie  the  earth  beneath,** 
SOUTHWELL— 

"She  offereth  joy,  but  bringeth  grief; 
A  kiss where  she  doth  kilL" 

"  Tears  kindle  sparks." 

"Her  loving  looks  are  murdering  darts." 

"Like  winter  rose  and  summer  ice." 

"  May  never  was  the  month  of  love, 
For  May  is  full  of  flowers  ; 
But  rather  April,  wet  by  kind, 
For  love  is  full  of  showers." 
SHAKSPERE— 

•"Good-night,  good-night,  parting  is  such  sweet  sorrowj 
That  I  shall  say  good-night  till  it  be  morrow." 

"  Love  is  a  smoke  raised  with  the  fume  of  sighs  5 
Being  purged,  a  fire  sparkling  in  lovers'  eyes ; 
Being  vex'd,  a  sea  nourished  with  lovers'  tears  I 
"What  is  it  else  ?  a  madness  most  discreet, 
A  choking  gall  and  a  preserving  sweet" 

Petrarch's  poems,  says  Shelley,  "  are  as  spells  which  unseal  the 
inmost  enchanted  fountains  of  the  delight  which  is  the  grief  of 
love/'  In  that  part  of  the  Romance  of  the  Rose  which  was 
written  by  Jean  de  Meung,  and  translated  by  Chaucer,  occur  many 
similar  phrases  depicting  Love  as  an  emotional  paradox :  "  Also  a 
sweet  hell  it  is,  and  a  sorrowful  paradise ;"  "  delight  right  full  of 
heaviness,  and  drearihood  full  of  gladness ;"  "a  heavy  burden  light 
to  bear;"  "wise  madness,"  "despairing  hope,"  etc.  Mr.  Ruskin, 


1<S8  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEATTTY 

who  quotes  the  whole  passage  in  his  Fors  Claviyera,  declares: 
"I  know  of  no  such  lovely  love-poem  as  his  since  Dante." 

As  for  Dante,  he  fully  realised  the  "  sweet  pain  "  of  Love,  as  he 
called  it.  As  far  back  as  Plato's  Timceus  we  find  that  love,  as 
then  understood,  was  regarded  as  "a  mixture  of  pleasure  and 
pain." 

"  "Tis  the  pest  of  love,"  sings  Keats,  "  that  fairest  joys  bring 
most  unrest."  Thackeray  speaks  of  "  the  delights  and  tortures, 
the  jealousy  and  wakefulness,  the  longing  and  raptures,  the  frantic 
despair  and  elation,  attendant  upon  the  passion  of  love."  But  it 
is  superfluous  to  cite  modern  authors,  for  volumes  might  be  filled 
with  quotations  attesting  that  Love  is  neither  a  simple  "  Isetitia," 
as  Spinoza  defined  it,  nor  "  a  species  of  melancholy,"  but  a  mixture 
of  joy  and  sadness,  of  rapture  and  woe. 

Shakspere's  "  violent  sorrow  seems  a  modern  ecstasy  "  might  be 
adopted  as  a  general  motto  for  a  book  on  the  psychology  and 
history  of  Love. 

Love,  it  is  true,  is  not  the  only  passion  characterised  by  such  a 
paradoxical  mixture  of  moods.  Thus  in  Macbeth  the  sentence,  "  on 
the  torture  of  the  mind  to  lie  in  restless  ecstasy,"  does  not  refer  to 
Love ;  and  John  Fletcher,  too,  sings  in  a  general  way — 

"  There's  naught  in  this  life  sweet 
If  man  were  wise  to  see't, 
But  only  melancholy, 
0  sweetest  Melancholy  1" 

A  German  author,  Oswald  Zimmermann,  has  even  written  a 
volume  of  almost  two  hundred  pages,  wherein  he  endeavours  to 
analyse  various  emotions  and  historic  phenomena,  in  which  pleasure 
and  pain  are  intimately  associated.  He  has  chapters  on  the 
Beautiful  in  Art  and  in  Nature,  on  Death,  on  Mysticism,  on  the 
ancient  festivals  of  Dionysus  and  Aphrodite,  on  the  mediaeval 
flagellants,  on  lust  and  cruelty,  on  various  epochs  of  modern 
literature,  etc.  His  book  bears  the  curious  title  Die  Wonne.  des 
LeidS)  because  he  holds  that  there  is  in  these  phenomena  an 
"Ecstasy  of  Woe,"  distinct  from  pleasure  and  pain,  pure  and 
simple,  and  superior  to  them. 

Hartmann,  the  pessimist  philosopher,  goes  a  step  farther,  and 
claims  that  "  there  is  no  pleasure  which  does  not  contain  an  ele- 
ment of  grief;  and  no  pain  without  a  tinge  of  pleasure."  This  is 
obviously  an  exaggeration ;  for  what  is  the  element  of  anguish  that 
enters  into  the  feelings  of  a  successful  lover  when  he  imprints  the 
first  kiss  on  the  lips  of  the  girl  who  has  just  promised  to  be  his 


MODERN  LOVE  169 

wife  ?  or  what  the  element  of  pleasure  in  the  feelings  of  a  jealous 
lover  the  moment  he  hears  that  his  rival  has  won  the  prize  1 

Yet,  if  we  except  a  pleasurable  or  painful  climax,  like  these, 
Hartmann's  maxim  may  be  accepted  as  approximating  the  truth, 
especially  in  the  case  of  Love,  which,  more  than  any  other  passion, 
constantly  changes  its  moods,  so  that,  from  their  close  proximity, 
each  one  cannot  fail  to  rub  off  some  of  its  colour  on  the  others. 
Who  but  a  lover  can  experience  in  one  brief  second  both  the  thrill 
of  heavenly  delight  and  the  sting  of  deadly  anguish — "  Himmel- 
hoch  jauchzend  zum  Tode  betriibt,"  as  Schiller  puts  it  1  A  whole 
lifetime  of  emotion  is  crowded  into  the  one  night  preceding  a 
lover's  proposal :  hope  and  fear  chasing  one  another  across  his  weary 
brain  like  a  Witches'  Sabbath  on  the  Brocken. 

One  would  imagine  that  the  moment  when  an  admirer  calls  on 
his  girl,  to  be  fascinated  by  her  smiles  and  graceful  manners,  and 
to  be  thrilled  by  her  melodious  voice,  must  be  one  of  unmixed 
delight  and  ecstasy.  But  if  the  slightest  doubt  as  to  her  feelings 
lurks  in  his  mind,  he  is  much  more  apt  to  be  harassed  by  a 
peculiar  bitter-sweet  feeling.  Will  he  make  a  good  impression  on 
her  this  time?  he  will  ask  himself;  has  she  perhaps  changed,  or 
found  another  more  acceptable  admirer,  and  is  she  going  to  hint  as 
much  by  her  altered  manner  1  These  and  a  hundred  other  appre- 
hensions will  torture  and  depress  him ;  so  that  he  will  more  than 
probably  lose  that  "  easy  manner  and  gay  address  "  which  are  such 
mighty  weapons  in  winning  a  woman's  heart. 

Nor  is  the  girl,  on  her  part,  free  from  the  anguish  of  doubt. 
Though  her  admirer  seems  to  be  truly  devoted  to  her,  she  has 
read  in  the  song  that  "all  men  are  not  gay  deceivers,"  which 
somehow  seems  to  imply  logically  that  most  men  are  gay  deceivers. 
Perhaps,  she  will  muse,  he  will  only  worship  me  as  long  as  I  leave 
him  in  absolute  doubt  as  to  my  feelings ;  and  subsequently,  having 
gratified  his  vanity  and  secured  my  photograph,  he  will  place  it  in 
his  album  to  show  to  all  his  friends  as  his  latest  conquest,  and 
then  flit  to  another  flower. 

After  all,  Schopenhauer  was  right  in  saying  that  when  we  have 
no  great  sorrows  the  imagination  invents  small  ones  which  torment 
us  quite  as  much  as  the  others.  When  one  sees  the  peculiar 
delight  lovers  take  in  teasing  and  torturing  each  other,  one  feels 
tempted  to  believe  with  Zimmermann  that  there  is  "eine  Lust  am 
Schmerze  " — that  pain  in  itself  contains  a  gratification,  an  "  ecstasy 
of  woe,"  distinct  from  positive  pleasure  itself. 

Yet  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  take  refuge  in  such  an  emotional 
paradox  in  order  to  account  for  the  value  and  luxury  of  Lovers' 


170  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Quarrels  and  all  the  various  mixed  moods  of  Love.  A  sufficient 
explanation  is  afforded  by  the  principles  of  Contrast  and  emotional 
Persistence. 

Owing  to  the  fact  that  feeling  seems  to  have  a  regular  pulsation 
or  rhythm,  our  hours  of  anguish  are  always  interrupted  by  intervals 
of  hope  and  happy  retrospection — as  in  Chopin's  funeral  march, 
where  the  gloomy  dirge  is  interrupted  for  a  time  by  a  delicious 
melody  of  happy  reminiscence,  like  a  heavenly  voice  of  consolation. 
When  the  nervous  tension  has  become  too  great  the  string  breaks 
and  the  bow  resumes  its  straightness  and  elasticity.  Hence  it  is 
that  an  uncertain  lover  actually  gloats  over  the  anguish  of  doubt 
and  jealousy:  for  he  has  an  instinctive  fore-feeling  that  when  the 
reaction  of  hope  and  confidence  will  come,  he  will  enjoy  an  ecstasy 
of  the  imagination  of  which  an  always  confident  love  has  no  con- 
ception. 

Uninterrupted  enjoyment  of  lovers'  bliss  would  soon  dull  the 
edge  of  pleasure,  as  an  unbroken  succession  of  sweet  concords  in 
music  would  cloy  the  aesthetic  sense.  The  introduction  of  discords 
raises  a  longing  for  their  resolution  which,  if  gratified,  restores  to 
the  concords  their  original  charm  and  freshness,  and  thus  prolongs 
the  pleasures  of  music.  A  tourist  after  spending  a  month  on  the 
top  of  a  Swiss  mountain  becomes  comparatively  indifferent  to  the 
scene  of  which  he  knows  every  detail  by  heart ;  but  let  his  peak 
be  hidden  in  dense  clouds  for  a  few  days,  and  he  cannot  fail,  on 
emerging  again  into  sunlight,  to  greet  the  view  with  the  same 
thrill  of  delight  as  on  the  day  of  his  arrival. 

It  is  their  constant  and  unexpected  changes  from  joy  to  sadness, 
from  tears  to  smiles,  that  constitute  the  greatest  charm  of  Heine 
and  Chopin  and  make  them  the  lyric  poet  and  musician  par 
excellence  for  lovers.  Either  a  gladsome  rainbow  suddenly  appears 
to  illumine  their  lurid  landscape ;  or,  again,  "  their  plenteous  joys, 
wanton  in  fulness,  seek  to  hide  themselves  in  drops  of  sorrow." 

Even  the  famous 

"  For  ought  that  I  could  ever  read, 
Could  ever  hear  by  tale  or  history, 
The  course  of  true  love  never  did  run  smooth  "— 

what  is  it  but  another  way  of  stating  that  that  Love  which  has 
met  with  no  impediments,  in  which  anguish  and  delight  have  not 
warmed  one  another  by  mutual  friction,  has  never  broken  out  into 
a  conflagration  sufficiently  brilliant  to  be  recorded  "by  tale  or 
history"  as  a  remarkable  specimen  of  "true  love."  It  is  the 
plot-intereat  that  fascinates  the  reader  as  well  as  the  lover  him- 


MODERN  LOVE  171 

self;  it  is  the  impediments  and  emotional  conflicts,  the  coyness  of 
fate,  that  constitute  the  principal  charm  in  a  tale  of  love ;  and  it 
would  take  a  very  clever  novelist  to  attract  readers  by  an  account 
of  a  courtship  of  which  the  happy  result  was  a  foregone  conclusion 
at  every  stage. 

Thus  the  magic  effect  of  contrasted  emotions  suggests  why 
pleasure  alternating  with  woe  in  Love  is  more  intense  than 
pleasure  uninterrupted.  A  mountaineer  who  has  been  wading 
through  snowfields  all  day  up  to  his  knees  enjoys  the  comforts  of 
his  slippers,  a  bright  fire,  and  a  cup  of  tea  in  the  evening,  twice  as 
much  as  a  man  who  has  been  all  day  at  home. 

On  reflection,  however,  it  seems  as  if  Contrast,  far  from  re- 
ducing things  to  their  first  principles,  itself  needed  an  explanation. 
Why  is  it  that  by  contrasting  two  emotions  we  heighten  their 
colour  ?  A  partial  explanation  was,  indeed,  suggested  in  speaking 
of  discords :  anguish  begets  desire,  and  the  more  intense  desire 
has  been,  the  more  lively  is  its  gratification.  A  more  profound 
solution  of  the  problem,  however,  is  found  in  the  fact  that  feelings 
have  their  echoes,  which  continue  sometimes  long  after  the  original 
tone  has  ceased  ;  and  if  meantime  a  new  tone  is  sounded,  it  blends 
with  the  echo  and  produces  a  mixed  feeling. 

The  sense  of  Temperature  affords  a  simple  illustration  of  this 
"  echo."  Place  two  basins  before  you,  one  filled  with  tepid,  the 
other  with  ice-cold,  water.  Put  your  right  hand  in  the  ice-water 
one  minute,  leaving  the  left  in  your  pocket.  Then  put  both 
hands  into  the  tepid  water.  It  will  seem  still  tepid  to  the  left, 
but  quite  warm  to  the  right  hand. 

Some  psychologists,  however,  deny  that  pleasures  and  pains 
ever  coalesce  into  one  feeling — that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a 
mixed  feeling.  They  contend  that  the  attention  can  be  fixed  on 
only  one  feeling  at  a  time,  that  the  stronger  crowds  out  the 
weaker,  and  that  it  is  only  their  rapid  succession  that  makes  two 
feelings  appear  simultaneous,  just  as  a  firebrand  swung  around 
rapidly  seems  to  form  a  fiery  circle. 

Now  it  is  quite  true  that  the  attention  can  be  fixed  on  only 
one  feeling  at  any  given  moment,  and  that  the  stronger  crowds 
out  the  weaker  so  far  as  the  attention  is  concerned :  yet  this  does 
not  prevent  the  prevailing  feeling  from  being  affected  by  the  echo 
of  the  one  which  preceded  it.  If  a  man,  buried  in  the  labyrinths 
of  a  big  hotel,  is  waked  up  in  the  night  by  cries  of  fire ;  though  it 
may  prove  a  false  alarm,  yet  the  effect  of  the  fright  will  remain 
with  him  and  cast  a  gloom  over  his  whole  day's  doings,  however 
pleasant  in  themselves.  And  a  doubtful  lover's  enjoyment  of  hia 


172  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

sweetheart's  sweetest  smiles  is  often  galled  by  the  remembrance 
that  on  the  preceding  day  she  smiled  just  as  sweetly  on  his  odious 
rival.  "For  sorrow  ends  not  when  it  seemeth  done,"  says 
Shakspere. 

In  his  admirable  Dissertation  on  the  Passions,  Hume  cleverly 
makes  use  of  a  musical  analogy  to  explain  how  different  emotions 
may  be  mixed :  "  If  we  consider  the  human  mind,  we  shall 
observe  that,  with  regard  to  the  passions,  it  is  not  like  a  wind- 
instrument  of  music,  which,  in  running  over  all  the  notes,  immedi- 
ately loses  the  sound  when  the  breath  ceases;  but  rather  resembles 
a  string-instrument,  where,  after  each  stroke,  the  vibrations  still 
retain  some  sound  which  gradually  and  insensibly  decays.  The 
imagination  is  extremely  quick  and  agile,  but  the  passions  in 
comparison  are  slow  and  restive;  for  which  reason,  when  any 
object  is  presented  which  affords  a  variety  of  views  to  the  one  and 
emotions  to  the  other,  though  the  fancy  may  change  its  views 
with  great  celerity,  each  stroke  will  not  produce  a  clear  and  distinct 
note  of  passion,  but  the  one  passion  will  always  be  mixt  and 
confounded  with  the  other." 

Lunatic,  Lover,  and  Poet. — A  still  better  analogy  of  the  manner 
in  which  one  feeling  may  be  modified  by  another  is  furnished  by 
the  optical  phenomenon  of  after-images.  If  we  gaze  very  steadily 
for  half  a  minute  at  a  green  wafer  and  then  at  a  sheet  of  white 
paper,  we  see  on  it  a  purple  image  of  the  wafer ;  purple  being  the 
complementary  colour  of  green,  i.e.  the  colour  which,  if  mixed 
with  green,  produces  white.  The  reason  of  this  phenomenon  is 
that,  after  looking  at  the  green  wafer,  the  nervous  fibres  in  the 
eye  which  perceive  that  colour  have  become  so  fatigued  that  the 
fainter  green  waves  in  the  white  paper  fail  to  make  any  percep- 
tible impression  on  them;  so  that  purple  alone  prevails  for  the 
moment.  So  to  the  infatuated  swain  who  has  been  tortured  by 
the  green-eyed  monster,  Jealousy,  the  moment  of  remission,  which 
would  else  be  one  of  neutral  indifference,  assumes  the  hue  of  rosy 
hope  and  positive  delight.  Hours  which  to  sober  mortals  would 
seem  perfect  blanks  are  thus  to  him  full  of  intense  feeling,  simply 
because  they  are  rebounds  from  a  state  of  extreme  tension  in  the 
opposite  direction.  He  might  be  likened  to  a  schoolboy  whose 
sleigh  is  carried  across  the  frozen  river  by  its  downward  impetus 
and  even  ascends  the  hill  on  the  other  side  some  distance  before  it 
stops.  Hence,  like  the  madman  and  the  man  of  genius,  the 
amorous  swain  is  always  either  down  in  a  fit  of  melancholy,  or  in 
an  exalted  ecstasy  of  joy,  rapidly  alternating  and  weirdly  inter- 
mingled— 


MODERN  LOVE  173 

"  The  lunatic,  the  lover,  and  the  poet, 
Are  of  imagination  all  compact. 

Now  poets  are  proverbially  melancholy;  and  madmen,  as 
Professor  Krafft-Ebing  tells  us,  are  also  more  commonly  tortured 
by  depressing  delusions  than  elated  by  pleasant  ones.  Hence,  if 
the  poet's  maxim,  just  quoted,  be  true,  we  should  expect  the 
lover's  prevailing  cast  of  mind  to  be  melancholy  too ;  and  so  it  is. 
Though  he  enjoys  moments  of  delirious  rapture,  to  which  sober 
mortals  are  utter  strangers,  yet  his  misgivings  are  incessant,  even 
when  he  is  almost  certain  of  success  :  and  it  takes  but  little  to 
poison  his  cup ;  for,  as  Professor  Volkmann  remarks,  "  one  drop 
of  anguish  suffices  to  gall  a  whole  ocean  cf  joy."  So  the  lover 
becomes  "pale  and  interesting,"  loses  weight  and  appetite,  and 
sighs  away  his  soul.  Were  this  emotional  fermenting  process 
allowed  to  last  too  long,  his  health  would  suffer  seriously :  but 
fortunately  it  ordinarily  ceases  in  a  year  or  so,  yielding  a  wine 
which,  though  less  sparkling  and  ebullient,  is  more  mellow  and 
less  intoxicating.  Romantic  Love,  in  other  words,  is  metamor- 
phosed into  conjugal  affection  which,  among  other  attributes  of 
Love,  strips  off  its  characteristic  trait  of  melancholy,  whereby  it 
is  easily  distinguished  from  all  other  forms  of  affection.  Before, 
however,  we  can  pass  on  to  consider  in  detail  the  differences 
between  Romantic  and  Conjugal  Love,  the  two  remaining  in- 
gredients of  Romantic  Love — Individual  Preference  and  Personal 
Beauty — must  be  briefly  considered. 


INDIVIDUAL   PREFERENCE 

It  happens  occasionally,  in  the  Western  regions  of  the  United 
States,  that  an  Indian  brave  casts  his  eyes  on  a  buxom  pale-face 
girl  and  desires  her  in  marriage.  He  offers  her  parents  two 
ponies  for  her ;  he  offers  three,  five,  and  even  seven  ponies ;  and 
when  still  refused  he  is  the  most  mystified  man  in  the  world : 
cannot  understand  how  any  man  can  be  so  egregiously  stupid  or 
avaricious  as  to  refuse  his  daughter  for  seven  ponies  !  Ugh  ! ! 

It  is  needless  to  recapitulate  the  numerous  instances  cited  in 
preceding  pages,  showing  that  throughout  the  world,  until  within 
a  few  centuries,  Romantic  Love  could  not  exist  because  the  girl's 
choice,  on  the  one  hand,  was  utterly  ignored,  while  the  man,  on 
the  other,  was  equally  prevented,  by  the  lack  of  opportunities  for 
courtship,  from  basing  his  choice  on  a  real  knowledge  of  the 
selected  bride.  The  parents  who  did  the  selecting,  always  for  the 


174  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

bride,  and  sometimes  even  for  the  bridegroom,  were  guided  in  their 
choice  by  money  and  rank  and  not  by  Health  and  Beauty,  which 
inspire  Love  and  follow  as  its  fruits.  The  history  of  Love,  till 
within  three  or  four  centuries  ago,  might,  in  short,  be  summed  up 
in  six  words :  No  Choice,  no  Love,  no  Beauty — except  in  those 
rare  cases  where  special  hygienic  advantages  prevailed,  or  where 
lucky  chance  brought  together  a  youth  and  a  maiden  who  in  the 
ordinary  course  of  events  would  have  fallen  in  Love  with  one 
another. 

There  is  reason  to  believe,  however,  that  even  if  in  the  early 
ages  of  the  world  the  young  had  been  allowed  greater  freedom  in 
choosing  a  lover,  Romantic  Love,  in  its  more  ardent  phases,  would 
not  have  flourished  to  any  great  extent  among  primitive,  ancient, 
and  medieval  nations :  for  the  reason  that  Love  depends  on 
Individualisation,  and  our  remote  ancestors  were  not  so  diversely 
individualised  as  we  are. 

Sexual  Divergence. — Comparative  ethnology,  psychology,  and 
biology  show  that  specialisation  is  a  product  of  higher  evolution, 
i.e.  that  individual  traits  are  developed  in  proportion  as  we  pro- 
ceed higher  in  the  scale  of  life,  physical  and  intellectual.  It  is 
true  there  are  no  two  flowers  in  the  fields,  no  two  leaves  in  a 
forest,  exactly  alike  in  every  detail :  but  the  differences  are 
infinitesimal,  and  almost  require  a  microscope  to  see  them.  It  is 
also  true  that  the  sheep  in  a  flock,  which  appear  almost  alike  to  a 
casual  observer,  are  individually  known  to  the  shepherd.  Possibly 
a  sharp-sighted  and  patient  naturalist  might  live  to  distinguish 
himself  by  distinguishing  the  individuals  in  a  swarm  of  bees,  or  a 
caravan  of  ants  :  but  this  would  be  counted  little  short  of  a 
miracle. 

Furthermore,  ordinary  observers  find  it  almost  as  difficult  to 
distinguish  individuals  in  a  crowd  of  Chinese,  Negroes,  or  Indians, 
as  in  a  bee-hive.  Closer  acquaintance  does  reveal  differences: 
but  they  are  rarely  so  great  as  those  between  individuals  in  civil- 
ised communities.  And  in  these  civilised  communities  themselves 
we  find  greater  differences,  sexual  differences  pre-eminently,  the 
higher  we  ascend.  Between  a  peasant  and  his  wife  the  difference, 
both  physical  and  mental,  is  surely  not  half  so  great  as  that 
between  a  lawyer  and  his  wife,  a  physician  or  professor  and  his 
wife.  "  The  lower  the  state  of  culture,"  says  Professor  Carl  Vogt, 
"  the  more  similar  are  the  occupations  of  the  two  sexes ; "  and 
similarity  of  occupation  entails  similarity  of  attitude,  expression, 
and  mental  habits.  Mr.  Higginson's  notion  that  civilisation  tends 
to  make  the  sexes  more  and  more  alike  is  true  only  as  regards 


MODERN  LOVE  176 

legal  rights  and  social  privileges ;  regarding  their  mental  traits 
and  physical  appearance  exactly  the  reverse  is  true.  The  peasant's 
wife  may  have  a  tender  heart  for  him  and  her  children,  but  her 
domestic  drudgery  and  hard  labour  in  the  fields  make  her  features, 
her  voice,  and  manners  harsh  and  masculine.  And  who  has  not 
read  a  hundred  times  that  the  Indian  squaws  look  quite  as  stern, 
stolid,  unemotional,  and  masculine  as  their  husbands  ? 

That  the  ancient  Greeks,  though  they  may  have  possessed  it, 
had  but  little  regard  for  Individuality  is  shown  especially  in  their 
sculpture,  and  in  the  fact  that  with  them  even  marriage  was  con- 
sidered less  a  private  than  a  social  matter.  Lycurgus,  Solon,  and 
Plato  agreed  in  viewing  marriage  as  "  a  matter  in  which  the  state 
had  a  right  to  interfere ; "  and  for  the  purpose  of  providing  the 
state  with  legitimate  citizens,  it  was  therefore  regarded  as  obliga- 
tory. The  absence  of  emotional  expression  in  Greek  statues  equally 
shows  their  indifference  to  Individualisation  and  their  ignorance  of 
Love  :  for  Love  is  inspired  not  so  much  by  regularity  of  features  J 
as  by  fascinating  variety  of  emotional  expression. 

Thus  the  absence  or  disregard  of  individual  traits  among  ancient 
nations  helps,  like  the  absence  of  individual  Choice,  to  account  for 
the  absence  of  Romantic  Love,  the  very  essence  of  which — as  dis- 
tinguished from  mere  sexual  passion — is  the  insistance  on  individual 
traits  and  the  mutual  adaptation  of  the  lovers. 

What  sublime — or  ridiculous — extremes,  this  absorption  in 
individual  traits  reaches  in  Modern  Love,  no  one  need  be  told. 
Not  only  does  the  lover  consider  his  maiden's  frowns  more  beauti- 
ful than  other  maidens'  smiles,  but  he  longs  to  kiss  the  floor  on 
which  she  has  walked;  and  every  ribbon  that  has  clasped  her 
waist,  every  jewel  that  has  touched  her  ear  or  neck,  becomes 
charged  with  a  subtle  and  mysterious  electric  current  that  would 
shock  him  with  a  thrill  of  recognition  should  his  fingers  come  in 
contact  with  them  on  a  table,  even  in  a  dark  room. 

Making  Women  Masculine. — Nothing  proves  so  irrefutably  the 
hopelessness  of  the  task  undertaken  by  a  few  "strong-minded" 
women — namely,  to  equalise  the  sexes  by  making  women  more 
masculine — than  the  fact  thus  revealed  by  anthropology  and  his- 
tory :  that  the  tendency  of  civilisation  has  been  to  make  men  and 
women  more  and  more  unlike,  physically  and  emotionally.  What- 
ever approximation  there  may  have  been  lias  been  entirely  on  the 
part  of  the  men,  who  have  become  less  coarse  or  "  manly,"  in  the 
old  acceptation  of  that  term,  and  more  femininely  refined ;  while 
women  have  endeavoured  to  maintain  the  old  distance  by  a  corre- 
sponding increase  of  refinement  on  their  part.  Should  the  Woman's 


176  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Eights  viragoes  ever  succeed  in  establishing  their  social  ideal,  when 
women  will  share  all  the  men's  privileges,  make  stump  speeches, 
and — of  course — go  back  to  the  harvest  fields  and  to  war  with 
them — then  good-bye,  Romantic  Love  !  But  there  is  no  danger 
that  these  Amazons  will  ever  carry  their  point.  They  might  aa 
well  try  to  convince  women  to  wear  beards ;  or  men,  crinolines. 

Were  any  further  proof  needed  that  the  sexes  have  been  con- 
tinually diverging  instead  of  converging,  it  would  be  found  in  the 
fact  that  the  young  of  both  sexes  are  more  alike  than  adults  :  in 
accordance  with  the  law  that  the  individual  goes  through  the  same 
stages  of  development  as  the  race.  And  there  are  embryological 
facts  which  indicate  even  that  there  is  some  truth  in  the  Platonic 
myth  that  the  sexes  at  first  were  not  separated ;  but  that  such 
separation  took  place  probably  for  three  reasons :  to  secure  a 
division  of  labour ;  to  prevent  the  full  hereditary  transmission  of 
injurious  qualities;  and,  thirdly,  to  secure  the  benefits  of  cross- 
fertilisation, — a  result  which  in  the  higher  spheres  of  human  life 
is  attained  through  Love,  which  is  based  on  opposite  or  comple- 
mentary qualities,  and  scorns  near  relationship. 

Love  and  Culture. — The  dependence  of  Love  on  Individualisa- 
tion,  and  the  dependence  of  Individualisation,  in  turn,  on  Culture, 
help  us  also  to  explain  an  apparent  difficulty  regarding  the  non- 
existence  of  Love  among  the  lower  classes  in  ancient  Greece  and 
elsewhere.  For  these  classes  were  not  subjected  to  the  same 
chaperonage  as  the  higher  circles  :  and  it  might  be  inferred  there- 
fore that  the  possibility  of  free  Choice  must  have  led  to  real  love- 
matches.  Perhaps  it  did  in  those  rare  cases  where  culture  had 
sent  a  rootlet  down  into  a  lower  social  stratum.  But  as  a  rule  one 
/  would  have  looked  in  vain  among  the  lower  classes — as  one  does 
to-day,  despite  poetic  fiction — for  minds  sufficiently  refined  to 
comprehend  and  feel  the  highly-complex  and  idealised  group  of 
emotions  which  constitute  Romantic  Love.  Of  course  it  would  be 
absurd  to  include  in  this  statement  people  of  refinement  who 
through  misfortune  have  been  plunged  into  abject  poverty.  They 
do  not  belong  to  the  "  Great  Unwashed  " — ot  TroAAot. 

When  Stendhal  asserts  that  in  France  Love  exists  only  in  the 
lower  classes,  while  Max  Nordau  states  that  in  Germany  it  is  to 
be  found  in  the  higher  classes  only,  they  are  probably  both  right 
— allowance  being  made  for  rare  exceptions.  What  Love  does 
exist  in  France — and  it  is  preciously  scarce — cannot  possibly  pre- 
vail except  among  the  working  people ;  and  in  Germany  among  the 
corresponding  class  it  must  be  equally  scarce,  whereas  in  the  middle 
and  higher  classes,  where  chaperonage  is  not  nearly  so  strict  and 


MODERN  LOVE  177 

idiotic  as  in  France,  Cupid  does  contrive  to  find  an  occasional 
target  for  his  arrows. 

PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Fanny  Brawne  having  complained  to  Keats  that  he  seemed  to 
ignore  all  her  other  qualities  and  have  eyes  for  her  beauty  alone, 
Keats  thus  justified  himself :  "  Why  may  I  not  speak  of  your 
beauty,  since  without  that  I  could  never  have  loved  you  ?  I  can- 
not conceive  any  beginning  of  such  love  as  I  have  for  you  but 
beauty.  There  may  be  a  sort  of  love  for  which,  without  the  least 
sneer  at  it,  I  have  the  highest  respect,  and  can  admire  it  in 
others :  but  it  has  not  the  richness,  the  bloom,  the  full  form,  the 
enchantment  of  love  after  my  own  heart." 

Fanny  Brawne  is  not  the  only  girl  who  has  thus  complained  to 
her  lover  about  his  exclusive  emphasising  of  her  Personal  Beauty. 
But  all  such  complaints  are  useless.  In  Modern  Love  the  Admira- 
tion of  Personal  Beauty  is  by  far  the  strongest  of  all  ingredients, 
and  is  becoming  more  so  every  year:  fortunately,  for  thereby 
Romantic  Love  is  becoming  more  and  more  idealised  and  converted 
into  a  pure  aesthetic  sentiment.  Goldsmith,  indeed,  laid  stress  on 
the  virtue  of  choosing  a  wife  on  the  same  principle  that  guided  her 
in  choosing  a  wedding-ring — for  qualities  that  will  wear.  But 
Personal  Beauty  does  wear,  with  proper  hygienic  care. 

Feminine  Beauty  in  Masculine  Eyes. — In  masculine  Love, 
regard  for  youthful  feminine  Beauty  has  always  played  a  role  more 
or  less  important.  But  the  effects  of  this  kind  of  sexual  selection 
in  the  lower  races  in  increasing  the  amount  of  physical  beauty  in 
the  world,  have  been  commonly  neutralised  by  the  crude  aesthetic 
notions  prevailing  among  men  as  to  what  constituted  feminine 
beauty.  The  weakness  of  the  aesthetic  overtone  in  Love,  more- 
over, has  hitherto  prevented  it  from  competing  successfully  with 
other  marriage-motives.  On  the  continent  of  Europe,  to  this  day, 
the  ugliest  girl  with  a  dowry  of  a  few  thousands  is  sure  to  find  a 
husband  and  transmit  her  bodily  and  his  mental  ugliness  to  her 
offspring ;  while  girls  who  could  transmit  a  considerable  amount  of 
beauty,  physical  and  mental,  to  their  children,  are  left  to  fade  away 
as  old  maids,  because  they  have  no  money. 

In  this  respect  America  sets  a  noble  example  to  most  parts  of 
Europe.  Thousands  of  young  Americans  marry  penniless  beauties 
every  year,  although  they  might  have  rich  ugly  girls  for  the  asking. 
This  is  one  of  the  things  Frenchmen  and  Germans  cannot  under- 
stand, and  class  as  "  Americanisms."  And  then  they  wonder  why 


178  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

it  is  that  there  are  so  many  pretty  girls  in  Canada  and  the  United 
States.  Another  "  Americanism,"  gentlemen.  These  pretty  girls 
are  the  issue  of  Love-matches.  Their  mothers  were  selected  for 
their  Beauty,  not  for  money  or  rank. 

Not  but  that  there  are  numerous  exceptions  to  this  golden  rule 
of  Love.  Were  there  not,  ugly  women  would  be  scarcer  than  they 
are,  even  in  America. 

Masculine  Beauty  in  Feminine  Eyes. — In  woman's  Love  the 
admiration  of  Personal  Beauty  has  played  a  much  less  significant 
role  than  in  man's  Love.  If,  nevertheless,  the  average  man  in 
most  countries  is  perhaps  a  better  specimen  of  masculine  Beauty 
than  the  average  woman  of  feminine  Beauty,  this  is  owing  to  the 
facts  that  sons  as  well  as  daughters  may  inherit  their  mother's 
beauty,  and  that  men,  leading  a  more  active  and  athletic  life,  are 
more  beautiful  than  women  in  proportion  as  they  are  more 
healthy. 

In  the  past  barbarous  times  the  constant  wars  and  the  unsettled 
state  of  social  affairs  made  it  important  for  women  to  select  men 
not  for  their  beauty,  but  for  their  energy  courage,  and  manly 
prowess.  Desdemona  falls  in  Love  with  the  Moor  despite  his 
colour  and  ugliness ;  and  why  1  Othello  himself  tells  us — 

"  She  loved  me  for  the  dangers  I  had  passed, 
And  I  loved  her  that  she  did  pity  them." 

And  it  is  on  beholding  Orlando  vanquishing  the  Duke's  wrestler 
that  Rosalind  falls  in  Love  with  him.  As  Celia  remarks:  "Young 
Orlando,  that  tripped  up  the  wrestler's  heels  and  your  heart,  both 
in  an  instant." 

Women  are  conservative ;  and  in  the  ludicrous  feminine  eager- 
ness to  make  immortal  heroes  of  the  ephemeral  victors  in  a  boat- 
race  or  baseball  match,  we  see  an  echo,  in  these  peaceful  days,  of  a 
feminine  trait  imprinted  on  them  in  warlike  times. 

Intellectual  supereminence,  in  the  meantime,  was  ignored  by 
women.  Petrarch's  verses  made  no  impression  on  Laura,  and 
Dante  could  not  even  win  Beatrice  with  such  poetic  beauties  as 
these  lines — 

"  "Whatever  her  sweet  eyes  are  turned  upon, 
Spirits  of  Love  do  issue  thence  in  flame, 
"Which  through  their  eyes  who  then  may  look  on  them 
Pierce  to  the  heart's  deep  chamber  every  one. 
And  in  her  smile  Love's  image  you  may  see 
Whence  none  can  gaze  upon  her  steadfastly." 

There  is,  however,  already  a  large  class  of  superior  women  who 


MODERN  LOVE  179 

have  discovered  that  brains  have  displaced  muscle  in  the  successful 
struggle  for  existence,  and  that  strong  nerves  are  the  true  storage- 
batteries  of  courage  and  vigour  in  modern  life.  Hence  the  homage 
paid  to  men  of  genius. 

In  regard  to  masculine  Beauty  a  change  likewise  has  come  over 
the  feminine  mind.  Fashionable  young  ladies  appear,  indeed,  to 
be  as  exacting  in  the  matter  of  what  they  consider  Personal  Beauty 
as  their  beaux  are.  A  barber's  pet  is  their  pet,  even  as  the  fashion- 
able man's  ideal  of  femininity  is  a  milliner's  model.  There  can  be 
hardly  any  doubt  that  this  is  an  improvement  on  the  taste  of  those 
savages  who  prefer  their  women  black,  with  thick  lips,  flat  noses, 
and  tattooed,  or  smeared  with  a  half-inch  coat  of  paint. 

Says  a  writer  in  the  London  Magazine  (1823):  "The  pale 
poet,  whose  works  enchant  us  all,  is  nobody  in  the  park  :  with  his 
shrunk  cheeks  and  spindle  legs,  he  sneaks  along  as  little  noticed 
as  a  fly;  while  a  thousand  fond  eyes  are  fixed  on  the  gay  and 
handsome  apprentice  there,  with  just  enough  intellect  to  make  the 
clothes  which  make  him." 

Serves  the  pale  poet  quite  right.  His  genius  does  not  give 
him  any  right  to  neglect  his  health,  or  to  allow  the  tailor's  appren- 
tice to  surpass  him  in  attention  to  his  personal  appearance.  Genie 
oblige.  And  whether  geniuses  or  not,  men  should  pay  just  as 
much  attention  to  their  dress  and  personal  attractiveness  as  women. 

A  convincing  illustration  of  my  thesis  that  Personal  Beauty  is 
to-day  a  more  important  factor  in  woman's  Love  than  formerly,  is 
afforded  by  the  circumstance  that  formerly  Love  had  the  effect  of 
making  a  man  neglect  his  beard,  and  hands,  and  clothes,  and  in- 
dulge in  general  slovenliness,  as  we  see  in  Rosalind's  summary  of 
the  symptoms  of  masculine  Love,  as  well  as  in  various  passages  in 
Cervantes  and  other  authors;  whereas  to-day  it  is  just  the  reverse, 
as  noted  under  the  head  of  Gallantry.  It  is  most  amusing  to 
watch  a  man  smitten  with  sudden  passion :  how  carefully  he  adjusts 
his  cravat,  curls  his  moustache,  brushes  his  hat  and  boots,  polishes 
his  finger-nails,  removes  spots  from  his  coat,  regards  himself  in  the 
mirror,  and — wishes  he  were  a  millionaire. 

So  much  for  the  general  relations  between  Love  and  Beauty. 
It  now  remains  to  consider  in  detail  what  peculiarities  of  personal 
appearance  are  and  have  been  specially  favoured  by  Love.  This 
involves  an  sesthetico-anatomical  analysis  of  eveiy  part  of  the  human 
body  from  toe  to  top.  To  this  analysis  almost  one  half  of  this 
work  will  be  devoted — showing  the  preponderating  importance  of 
Personal  Beauty  over  the  other  factors  in  Modern  Love.  But 
before  proceeding  to  this  pleasant  task  it  will  be  well,  for  the  sake 


180  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

of  continuity,  to  discuss  the  remaining  aspects  of  Modern  Love : 
how  it  differs  from  conjugal  affection;  how  men  of  genius  behave 
when  in  Love ;  what  are  the  peculiarities  of  the  physical  expression 
of  Love  in  features  and  actions;  how  Love  maybe  won  and  cured; 
and  how  the  leading  modern  nations  differ  in  their  amorous  pecu- 
liarities. A  consideration  of  Schopenhauer's  theory  of  Love  will 
then  naturally  lead  us  to  the  second  part  of  this  treatise,  in  which 
Personal  Beauty  alone  will  form  our  theme. 


CONJUGAL  AFFECTION  AND  ROMANTIC  LOVE 

Perhaps  the  main  reason  why  no  one  has  anticipated  me  in 
writing  a  book  showing  that  Love  is  an  exclusively  modern  senti- 
ment, and  tracing  its  gradual  development,  is  because  no  distinction 
has  been  commonly  made  between  Romantic  Love  and  Conjugal 
Affection,  though  they  differ  as  widely  as  maternal  love  and  friend- 
ship. The  occurrence  of  noble  examples  of  conjugal  attachment 
as  far  back  as  Homer  has  obscured  the  fact  that  pre-nuptial  or 
Romantic  Love  is  almost  as  modern  as  the  telegraph,  the  railway, 
and  the  electric  light. 

Two  thousand  and  four  hundred  years  ago  the  Greek  philosopher 
Empedokles  taught  that  there  are  four  elements — fire,  air,  water, 
earth — which  remain  unchanged  amid  all  combinations.  Chemistry 
has  long  since  shown  that  these  supposed  elements  are  compounds, 
and  that  the  number  of  real  elements  is  much  larger. 

In  a  similar  way  the  tender  or  family  emotions  have  been  gra- 
dually distinguished  from  one  another.  Among  the  ancient  Greeks 
<£tA.o-n?s  meant  both  friendship  and  sexual  love,  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  they  strangely  confounded,  both  in  theory  and  in  practice. 
To-day  we  distinguish  not  only  between  friendship  and  sexual  love, 
but  between  the  two  phases  of  sexual  love — Romantic  and  Con- 
jugal Affection — the  former  of  which  was  unknown  to  the  Greeks. 
We  do  this  not  only  because,  as  in  the  case  of  the  chemical 
elements,  our  knowledge  has  become  more  precise  and  subtle,  but 
because  these  emotions  have  been  gradually  developed,  and  have 
assumed  different  characteristics,  so  that  it  would  be  difficult  at 
present  to  mistake  one  for  the  other. 

As  regards  the  difference  between  Conjugal  and  Romantic  Love, 
however,  the  current  conceptions  are  not  yet  so  clear  and  definite; 
many  good  folks  being,  in  fact,  inclined  to  frown  upon  the  sugges- 
tion that  there  is  any  such  difference.  Yet  it  is  useless  for  them 
to  endeavour,  with  well-meant  hypocrisy,  to  impress  upon  the 


CONJUGAL  AFFECTION"  AND  ROMANTIC  LOVE         181 

young  the  notion  that  Love  is  unchangeable,  since  no  one  who 
keeps  his  eyes  open  can  help  noticing  how  differently  married 
couples  behave  from  lovers.  In  marriage  the  dazzling  blue  flame 
of  Romantic  Love  gradually  grows  smaller  and  dies  away.  But 
the  coals  may  retain  their  glow  and  perchance  keep  the  heart 
warmer  than  the  former  flickering  flames  of  Love. 

There  is,  indeed,  a  great  moral  advantage  to  be  gained  by 
frankly  acknowledging  that  Love  undergoes  a  metamorphosis  in 
wedlock.  It  breaks  the  sting  of  cynicism.  For  if  we  are  told  that 
"  marriage  is  the  sunset  of  love,"  or  that  "  the  only  sure  cure  for 
love  is  marriage,"  we  may  calmly  retort,  "What  of  it1?"  When 
the  romantic  passion  subsides,  its  place  is  taken  by  another  group 
of  emotions,  equally  noble  and  conducive  to  the  welfare  of  society. 
It  is  not  an  annihilation  of  anything,  but  simply  a  change  :  losing 
some  pleasures,  but  gaining  others  in  their  place ;  getting  rid  of 
some  pains  to  be  burdened  with  others.  Love's  metamorphosis 
into  conjugal  affection  is  like  that  of  a  wild  rose  into  its  red  berry. 
Though  less  fragrant  and  lovely  than  the  rose,  the  berry  is  almost-. 
as  warm  in  colour,  endures  longer,  and  brings  forth  fresh  plants  to 
adorn  future  seasons. 

Similes,  however,  are  not  arguments;  and  it  behoves  us  therefore, 
for  the  benefit  of  bachelors  and  old  maids,  and  of  married  folks 
who  never  were  in  love,  to  point  out  definitely  wherein  conjugal 
differs  from  Romantic  Love  ;  which  at  the  same  time  will  explain 
why  conjugal  affection  was  able  to  exist  so  many  centuries  before 
Romantic  Love. 

In  preceding  pages  a  fragmentary  attempt  has  been  made  to 
characterise  Love,  and  to  show  how  its  growth  was  impeded  through 
the  inferior  social  and  intellectual  status  of  women  and  the  absolute 
chaperonage  of  the  young.  Maidens  and  youths  had  no  oppor- 
tunity to  meet  and  become  acquainted.  Barter,  and  considerations 
of  rank  and  expediency,  took  the  place  of  affection,  and  parental 
authority  that  of  individual  choice.  There  was  no  prolonged 
courtship,  hence  no  jealousy  of  rivals,  no  female  coyness  and 
coquetry,  no  alternating  hopes  and  doubts,  no  monopoly  of  mutual 
admiration,  no  ecstatic  adoration,  sympathetic  sharing  of  lovers' 
joys  and  griefs,  or  pride  of  conquest  and  possession. 

Conjugal  affection,  on  the  other  hand,  was  much  less  retarded 
in  its  growth  by  such  artificial  arrangements,  the  outcome  of 
jstrong  man's  brutal  selfishness.  Polygamy  was  the  chief  impedi- 
ment ;  but  as  soon  as  woman  became  sufficiently  "  emancipated  " 
to  claim  a  husband  of  her  own,  the  soil  was  ready  for  the  growth 
of  conjugal  affection.  In  its  early  stages  this  form  of  affection 


182  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

must  have  been  much  more  crude  and  simple  than  it  is  in  modern 
society.  In  most  instances  it  was  probably  little  more  than  a 
mere  superficial  attachment,  growing  out  of  the  habit  of  living 
together  for  some  time  \  the  husband  being  attached  to  his  wife 
on  account  of  the  domestic  comforts  and  ease  she  provided  for 
him,  and  the  wife  to  the  husband  very  much  as  a  dog  is  to  his 
master,  who,  though  cruel,  yet  takes  care  of  and  feeds  him. 

How  crudely  utilitarian  the  conjugal  bond  is  among  primitive 
men  may  be  inferred  from  Mr.  Wallace's  remarks  already  quoted 
as  to  the  motives  which  guide  the  maidens  of  certain  Amazon- 
valley  tribes  in  choosing  their  husbands.  There  is,  he  says,  "  a 
trial  of  skill  at  shooting  with  the  bow  and  arrow,  and  if  the 
young  man  does  not  show  himself  a  good  marksman,  the  girl 
refuses  him,  on  the  ground  that  he  will  not  be  able  to  shoot  fish 
and  game  enough  for  the  family." 

With  the  ancient  "classical"  nations  there  were,  unless  the 
poets  have  strongly  idealised  their  characters,  examples  of  conjugal 
affection  hardly  differing  from  the  most  refined  modern  instances. 
Owing  to  the  then  prevalent  contempt  for  the  female  mind,  how- 
ever, such  cases  cannot  be  accepted  as  fair  samples  of  the  "general 
article  "  ;  and  they  only  allow  us  to  infer  that,  as  with  Love  and 
with  genius,  so  with  conjugal  affection,  there  were  some  early 
perfect  instances  anticipating  by  many  centuries  the  general  course 
of  emotional  evolution. 

In  the  dark  and  warlike  mediaeval  ages  Conjugal  Love,  on  the 
woman's  side,  was  apparently  little  more,  as  a  rule,  than  a  sense 
of  devotion  to  her  husband  based  on  her  need  of  protection  against 
barbarous  enemies ;  and  what  it  was  on  the  husband's  side  may  be 
inferred  from  his  stern  and  often  tyrannic  rule  in  his  own  house, 
which  was  calculated  to  breed  in  his  wife  and  children  fear  but 
neither  conjugal  nor  filial  affection. 

In  modern  Conjugal  Affection  the  elements  are  as  diverse  anl 
as  variously  intermingled  as  in  Love,  if  not  more  so ;  and  it 
would  be  as  difficult  to  find  two  cases  of  conjugal  love  exactly 
alike  as  two  human  faces,  or  two  leaves  in  a  forest.  One  man 
cherishes  his  wife  chiefly  on  account  of  the  home  comfort  she 
provides — the  neat  and  tasteful  domestic  interior,  the  well-cooked 
dinners,  the  economic  attention  to  household  affairs,  etc.  Another 
man's  pride  in  his  spouse  is  based  on  her  conversational  skill,  her 
diplomatic  art  of  asserting  her  place  among  the  upper  ten  in 
society,  and  of  adorning  her  drawing-rooms  with  the  presence  of 
prominent  people  of  the  day.  A  third  husband  loves  his  wife 
for  her  artistic  accomplishments  or  her  personal  charms.  Still 


CONJUGAL  AFFECTION  AND  ROMANTIC  LOVE          183 

another,  an  author,  is  devoted  to  his  spouse  because  she  cleverly 
assists  his  labours  by  criticism  and  suggestion,  and  still  more 
because  she  takes  such  a  sympathetic  interest  in  his  creations,  and 
really  thinks  that  no  one  since  Shakspere  has  written  like  her 
own  dear  Adolphus. 

These  and  a  thousand  like  circumstances,  with  their  attendant 
feelings,  enter  into  the  highly  complex  group  of  emotions  subsumed 
under  the  name  of  Conjugal  Love.  Yet,  since  any  one  of  these 
feelings  may  be  absent  without  extinguishing  Conjugal  Affection, 
they  cannot  be  regarded  as  its  essentials  or  framework,  but  only 
as  colouring  material. 

Nor  is  that  which  is  commonly  regarded  as  the  strongest  of  all 
cements  between  husband  and  wife— the  common  love  of  their 
children — to  be  accepted  as  the  essence  of  conjugal  love.  For 
childless  couples  present  many  of  the  most  remarkable  cases  of 
devotion,  while  in  many  other  cases  the  children  not  only  fail  to 
rekindle  the  torch  of  love,  but  even  arouse  jealousies  and  ill-feeling 
between  their  parents  by  showing  a  special  preference  for  one  or 
the  other.  Nevertheless,  though  not  absolutely  essential  to 
conjugal  love,  the  common  parental  feeling  is  one  of  its  most 
important  and  constant  ingredients ;  and  there  is  none  of  its 
tributaries  which  adds  more  to  the  deep  current  of  connubial  bliss. 
It  enables  the  parents  to  enjoy  once  more  the  simple  pleasures  of 
life,  to  which  they  had  grown  callous ;  it  brings  back  the 
peculiarly  delicious  memories  of  their  own  childhood  and  youth  ; 
enables  the  father  to  discover  his  former  sweetheart  renewed  in 
his  daughter,  and  the  mother  her  former  lover  in  her  son ;  while 
their  common  pride  in  the  beauty  or  accomplishments  of  the 
children  supplies  them  with  a  never-failing  topic  of  conversation 
and  source  of  sympathy. 

And  this  suggests  what  must  be  regarded  as  the  real  kernel  of 
conjugal  attachment — a  perennial  mutual  sympathy  regarding  not 
only  the  affairs  of  their  children  but  every  other  domestic  affair — 
in  other  words,  a  complete  and  necessary  harmony  of  feelings  and 
interests.  The  accent  rests  on  the  word  necessary  ;  for  it  is  this 
feeling  of  necessary  communion  of  interests  that  distinguishes 
conjugal  affection  from  Love  and  from  friendship,  in  both  of 
which  there  is  a  mutual  sympathy,  but  not  so  far-reaching  and 
inevitable.  A  lover's  fame  or  disgrace  may  be  keenly  felt  by  his 
sweetheart  or  his  friend,  yet  society  does  not  associate  them  with 
the  other's  reputation  or  disgrace  ;  and  if  the  infamy  is  too  great, 
they  can  easily  sever  their  bond,  without  leaving  a  spot  on  their 
own  good  name.  Not  so  with  husband  and  wife.  His  promotion 


184  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

is  her  honour,  and  his  fall  her  humiliation ;  for  they  are  insepar- 
ably associated  in  the  public  miud,  and  cannot  be  parted  except 
through  divorce,  which  is  equivalent  to  social  suicide.  Therefore 
theirs  is  "one  glory  an*  one  shame,"  and  their  destiny  to  "share 
each  other's  gladness  and  weep  each  other's  tears." 

To  make  this  matrimonial  harmony  complete,  it  is  necessary 
that  there  should  be  a  real  sense  of  companionship,  i.e.  common 
tastes  and  topics  of  conversation.  "  Unlikeness  may  attract," 
says  Mill,  "  but  it  is  likeness  which  retains ;  and  in  proportion  to 
the  likeness  is  the  suitability  of  the  individuals  to  give  each  other 
a  happy  life."  The  opposite  qualities  by  which  lovers  are  often 
attracted  are  chiefly  of  a  physical  nature.  Where  the  mental 
differences  are  great — where  he,  for  instance,  is  fond  of  books  and 
music,  while  she  wishes  his  books  and  his  piano  in  Siberia ;  or 
she  fond  of  parties,  pictures,  and  theatres,  and  he  bored  to  death 
by  them  :  in  such  cases  genuine  Komantic  Love  cannot  survive  a 
few  weeks  of  constant  companionship,  and  hopes  of  nuptial  bliss 
must  end  in  disappointment. 

ROMANCE  IN   CONJUGAL  LOVE 

Horwicz  places  the  essence  of  Conjugal  Love  in  the  feeling  of 
being  indissolubly  united ;  and  this  agrees  substantially  with  our 
conclusion  that  it  lies  in  a  necessary  mutual  Sympathy  concerning 
every  affair  of  vital  interest.  Now  if  this  oUigato  Sympathy  is 
facilitated  by  a  communion  of  tastes,  as  just  suggested,  there  is 
no  reason  why  conjugal  life  should  not  retain  some  of  the  other 
elements  which  constitute  the  charm  of  Romantic  Love.  Novelists 
and  dramatists  will  perhaps  continue  to  avoid  wedded  life  as  a 
theme  because  it  lacks  the  plot-interest,  the  uncertainty,  and  the 
consequent  Mixed  Moods  of  pre-nuptial  Love.  Emotional  Hyper- 
bole, too,  will  rarely  survive  the  honeymoon,  for,  as  Addison 
remarks,  "  When  a  man  becomes  familiar  with  his  goddess,  she 
quickly  sinks  into  a  woman."  Yet  a  woman,  too,  is  not  such  a 
bad  thing  after  all,  if  you  know  how  to  manage  her.  Jealousy  is 
a  trait  of  Romantic  Love  that  is  only  too  apt  to  survive  in 
marriage.  By  a  judicious  use  of  its  sting  a  neglected  wife  can 
bring  her  husband  back  to  her  feet.  But  it  is  a  double-edged 
tool,  dangerous  to  toy  with.  The  Pride  of  Conquest  becomes 
changed  into  Pride  of  Possession  or  a  vain  feeling  of  Proprietor- 
ship, which  will  continue  so  long  as  the  husband  or  the  wife 
retains  those  self-sacrificing  qualities  which  distinguished  them 
during  Courtship — which,  however,  rarely  happens.  Where 


CONJUGAL  AFFECTION  AND  ROMANTIC  LOVE          185 

possession  is  assured  and  sanctioned  by  law,  Coyness  is  of  course 
out  of  the  question ;  yet  a  clever  woman  can  by  a  judicious 
adaptation  of  the  arts  of  Flirtation  do  much  to  keep  alive  the 
glowing  coals  of  former  romantic  passion.  All  she  has  to  do  is 
to  devise  some  novel  methods  of  fascinating  the  husband,  and 
then  keep  him  at  a  distance  till  he  resumes  the  tricks  of  devoted 
Gallantry  which  had  once  made  him  such  an  acceptable  lover. 

It  is  the  growing  indifference  to  Gallantry,  to  the  Desire  to 
Please,  active  and  passive,  that  is  responsible  for  the  usual 
absence  of  romance  in  conjugal  life.  And  there  seems  to  be  a 
general  ungallant  consensus  among  writers,  masculine  and 
feminine,  that  women  are  more  responsible  for  this  state  of  affairs 
than  men.  "  The  reason,"  says  Swift,  "  why  so  few  marriages 
are  happy,  is  because  young  ladies  spend  their  time  in  making 
nets,  not  in  making  cages."  Young  ladies  have,  no  doubt,  greatly 
improved  since  the  days  of  Swift ;  but  in  the  vast  majority  of 
cases  their  device  still  is  to  learn  a  few  superficial  tricks  of 
"  culture,"  and  to  practise  the  art  of  personal  adornment,  until 
they  have  caught  a  husband,  and  then  to  bid  good-bye  to  all 
music,  and  art,  and  study,  and  improvement  of  the  mind,  as  well 
as  to  the  "  bother  "  of  attending  to  Personal  Beauty  while  the 
husband  only  is  about.  As  if  it  were  not  a  thousand  times  more 
important  to  retain  the  husband's  romantic  adoration  and 
Gallantry,  originally  based  on  that  beauty,  than  to  enjoy  the 
momentary  admiration  of  a  third  person  ! 

On  this  topic  the  German  poet  Bodenstedt  has  some  remarks 
which  show  that,  after  all,  the  excessive  Oriental  Jealousy  which 
forbids  women  to  appear  unveiled  in  public  rests  on  a  basis  of 
common  sense : — 

"  Just  as  it  is  possible  to  trace  most  absurdities  to  an  originally 
quite  reasonable  idea,  so  not  a  few  things  may  be  said  in  favour  of 
the  Oriental  custom  which  allows  women  to  adorn  themselves  only 
for  their  husband,  and  to  unveil  their  face  only  before  him,  while 
outside  of  the  house  it  is  their  duty  to  appear  veiled  and  in  as  un- 
attractive a  costume  as  possible.  With  us,  it  is  well  known,  the 
opposite  is  true :  at  home  the  women  devote  little  attention  to 
their  toilet,  and  only  adorn  themselves  when  they  have  company 
or  go  out  visiting;  in  one  word,  they  display  their  charms  and 
their  finery  more  to  please  others  than  their  own  husband,"  etc. 

Surely  no  one  wishes  our  women  to  reserve  their  charms  exclu- 
sively for  their  husbands.  On  the  contrary,  such  a  proceeding 
would  be  considered  quite  as  unreasonable  and  selfish  as  to  lock  up 
a  Titian  or  a  Murillo  in  a  room  accessible  to  a  single  person  only ; 


186  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

but  certainly  the  husband  should  not  be  entirely  overlooked  in  his 
wife's  Desire  to  Please  by  her  Personal  Beauty.  His  Pride  on 
seeing  others  admire  her  does  not  alone  suffice  to  prolong  his 
romantic  adoration.  Don't  be  too  sure,  Amanda,  that  your 
husband  is  yours  because  you  are  married.  He  is  yours  in  Law, 
but  not  in  Love,  unless  you  preserve  your  personal  charms  in  his 
presence. 

The  fact  that,  whereas  in  Romantic  Love  men  are  superior  to 
women ;  in  conjugal  life,  on  the  other  hand,  woman's  love  is  com- 
monly much  deeper  and  more  lasting  than  man's,  indicates  in  itself 
that  marriages  are  made  or  marred  by  women.  (For  the  sake  of 
the  lovely  alliteration  some  writers  would  have  said — against  their 
conscience — that  "  marriages  are  made  or  marred  by  men  ; "  but 
alliteration  will  have  to  be  ignored  in  this  place  in  favour  of 
facts.)  Before  marriage,  women  are  more  beautiful  and  fascinating 
than  men,  wherefore  men  love  them  more  ardently  than  they  love 
the  men.  After  marriage,  it  is  the  men  who  grow  more  beautiful, 
more  manly,  in  body  as  well  as  in  mind  ;  hence  it  is  but  natural 
that  their  wives  should  love  them  more  and  more.  So  would 
wives  be  loved  more  and  more  if  they  did  not  so  soon  after  thirty 
lose  their  physical  charms,  without  trying,  by  reading  books  or  at 
least  the  newspapers,  to  make  themselves  intellectual  companions 
of  their  husbands,  able  to  converse  interestingly  on  various  topics. 

The  old  excuse  that  motherhood  inevitably  lessens  woman's 
charms  is  (.11  nonsense.  Married  women  at  thirty  are  almost 
always  handsomer  than  old  maids  of  thirty.  Women  grow  stout 
and  clumsy,  or  thin  and  faded  so  soon,  not  because  they  are 
mothers,  but  because  they  are  indifferent  to  the  laws  of  health ; 
because  they  refuse  to  go  out  to  get  fresh  air  and  exercise,  which 
would  preserve  the  freshness  of  their  complexion,  the  graceful  con- 
tours of  their  bodies,  and  the  elasticity  of  their  gait.  The  morbid 
fondness  for  a  hot-house  atmosphere,  and  the  horror  of  fresh  air, 
draughts,  and  vigorous  exercise,  have  done  more  to  shorten  man's 
Love  and  woman's  Beauty  than  all  other  causes  combined.  The 
road  to  lasting  Love  is  paved  with  lasting  Beauty. 

Inasmuch  as  Conjugal  Affection  was  not — as  might  be  naturally 
supposed — historically  developed  from  Romantic  Love,  since  it 
existed  long  before  Romantic  Love,  the  peculiarities  of  this  later 
passion  are  not  normally  present  in  Conjugal  Love.  To  what  ex- 
tent, however,  they  can  be  smuggled  in,  has  just  been  shown ; 
and  it  is  one  of  the  great  social  tasks  of  the  future  to  make  Con- 
jugal and  Romantic  Love  as  much  alike  as  possible :  not  by  making 
the  poetry  of  romance  more  prosaic,  but  by  making  the  prose  of 


CONJUGAL  AFFECTION  AND  ROMANTIC  LOVE          187 

conjugal  life  more  poetic.  But  so  long  as  Romantic  Love  is 
discouraged,  Conjugal  Affection,  too,  will  of  course  be  unable  to 
borrow  its  unique  charms.  Hence  an  additional  reason  for  facili- 
tating the  opportunities  for  Courtship  and  prolonging  its  duration. 

MARRIAGES   OP   REASON   OR   LOVE-MATCHES? 

The  number  of  parents  who  believe  that  their  infallible  wisdom 
is  a  better  guide  matrimonial  than  their  daughters'  choice  inspired 
by  Love,  is  still  so  large  that  it  is  worth  while  to  add  a  few  words 
in  the  hope  of  removing  this  obstacle  to  the  universal  rule  of 
Cupid.  Let  Mrs.  Lynn-Linton  be  their  spokeswoman.  "If  it 
seems  a  horrible  thing,"  she  says,  in  The  Girl  of  the  Period, 
"to  marry  a  young  girl  without  her  consent,  or  without  any 
more  knowledge  of  the  man  with  whom  she  is  to  pass  her  life 
than  can  be  got  by  seeing  him  once  or  twice  in  formal  family 
conclave,  it  seems  quite  as  bad  to  let  our  women  roam  about 
the  world  at  the  age  when  their  instincts  are  strongest  and  their 
reason  weakest  —  open  to  the  flatteries  of  fools  and  fops  —  the 
prey  of  professed  lady-killers — objects  of  loverlike  attentions  by 
men  who  mean  absolutely  nothing  but  the  amusement  of  making 
love — the  subjects  for  erotic  anatomists  to  study  at  their  pleasure. 
Who  among  our  girls  after  twenty  carries  an  absolutely  untouched 
heart  to  the  man  she  marries  1 " 

No  doubt  there  is  force  in  these  remarks :  but  they  do  not 
apply  to  the  Girl  of  the  Period.  They  apply  only  to  the  girl 
brought  up  on  the  old  system  of  being  left  in  complete  ignorance 
regarding  man  and  his  wicked  ways  of  heartless  and  meaningless 
flattery.  But  modern  girls  are  not  such  fools  as  some  people' 
would  think  them.  Tell  them  that  men  are  only  amusing  them- 
selves ;  a  hint  will  suffice :  and  the  man  who  imagines  himself  a 
"lady-killer"  will  suddenly  find  himself  a  victim  of  counter- 
flirtation  and  a  butt  of  feminine  sarcasm. 

Tell  girls,  furthermore,  not  that  every  man  loves  his  wife,  but 
that  many  hate  and  maltreat  their  unfortunate  spouse.     This  will 
make  them  cautious.     Tell  them  that  Love  is  not  an  absolute  but 
a  tentative  passion,  and  that  they  must  not  yield  to  the  first  ap- 
parent symptoms  and  throw  their  hearts  away  frivolously.     Tell 
them,  above  all,  that  men  who  are  extremely  gallant  and  compli- 
mentary,  without   being   in   the   least    embarrassed,    are    always 
insincere  and  sometimes  dangerous:  because  a_ man- jarho  i^. truly \ 
in  Love  is  always   embarrassed.      Tell   them  a  few   more   such5 
pessimistic  truths  about  men,  instead  of  allowing  them  to  perish 


188  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

through  optimistic  ignorance,  and  the  objections  against  free 
choice  urged  by  Mrs.  Lynn-Linton  will  vanish  like  vapour  in  sun- 
light. English  and  American  girls  are  quite  able  to  take  care  of 
themselves,  because  they  are  allowed  to  read  all  sorts  of  books, 
and  therefore  to  know  the  world  as  it  is.  And  if  any  one  says 
that  such  knowledge  has  rendered  English  and  American  girls  less 
delicate,  less  sweet  and  pure,  than  French  and  German  hothouse 
buds,  he  utters  an  unmitigated  falsehood. 

Advocates  of  so-called  "  wisdom  "  marriages  are  fond  of  point- 
ing out  cases  of  unhappy  married  life,  based  originally  on  free 
Choice.  But  free  Choice  by  no  means  always  implies  Love.  Its 
motives  are  often  pecuniary,  or  social;  and  in  these  cases  the 
marriage  actually  comes  under  the  head  of  "  wisdom  marriages/' 
whose  champions  are  thus  boxing  their  own  ears.  Besides,  we  must 
remember  Byron's  words,  that* "  many  a  man  thinks  he  marries  by 
choice  who  only  marries  by  accident."!  If  a  man  marries  his 
Rosaline  before  he  has  met  his  Juliet,  he  has  only  himself  or  his 
bad  lack  to  blame,  not  Love. 

The  frequency  with  which  runaway  "love-matches"  end  un- 
happily, is  adduced  as  another  argument  in  favour  of  wisdom- 
marriages.  Two  things  are  here  forgotten :  that  in  nineteen 
runaway  matches  out ,  of  twenty,  the  predominant  passion  is 
frivolity,  not  Love;  and  that  quite  a  considerable  proportion  of 
unions  not  preceded  by  an  elopement  end  unhappily ;  but  being 
less  romantic  they  are  not  so  much  talked  about. 

"  Wisdom  "  marriages  based  on  parental  choice  are  those  which 
have  prevailed  in  the  past :  and  we  have  seen  how  beautifully 
they  coincided  with  woman's  degradation,  ignorance,  and  social 
debasement. 

Wisdom  marriages  are  incompatible  with  Courtship,  which 
becomes  a  superfluous  preliminary  to  marriage.  Modern  methods 
of  Courtship  and  engagement  ordinarily  prolong  this  period  to 
about  a  year  or  two.  This  is  the  honeymoon,  not  of  marriage, 
but  of  life  itself,  the  time  when  earth  is  a  paradise.  During 
these  two  years  the  soul  makes  more  progress  in  refinement, 
maturity,  and  insight  than  during  any  other  decade  of  life.  Shall 
all  this  happiness,  all  this  refining  influence,  be  thrown  away  with 
Love1? 

Compatibility  of  temper  is  the  most  important  of  all  pre- 
requisites to  a  happy  marriage.  Should  Love  be  allowed  to  find 
out  during  Courtship  if  there  is  such  a  compatibility,  before  it 
is  too  late,  or  shall  the  inadequate  judgment  of  parents  unite 
two  souls  with  a*  much  mutual  affinity  as  oil  and  water  ? 


CONJUGAL  AFFECTION  AND  ROMANTIC  LOVE          189 

Self-sacrifice  for  their  children  is  considered  the  noblest  of 
parental  traits.  Were  Schopenhauer  right  in  claiming  that  in 
Love -maizes  the  parents  sacrifice  their  individual  happiness  to 
the  wellbemg  of  their  children — would  not  this  be  an  additional 
motive  for  abhorring  wisdom  marriages,  in  which  the  interests  of 
the  parents  alone  are  consulted  1 


MARRIAGE   HINTS 

It  would  be  foolish  to  deny,  on  the  other  hand,  that  Reason 
should  be  consulted  as  much  as  possible  as  long  as  Love  allows 
it  to  have  the  floor  for  a  moment.  Thus  men  might,  before  it 
is  too  late,  have  an  eye  to  Benjamin  Franklin's  advice  in  regard 
to  large  families  and  the  age  of  marriage. 

Mr.  F.  W.  Holland  of  Boston  has  collected  some  statistics  con- 
cerning which  Mr.  Galton  says,  "  One  of  his  conclusions  was  that 
morality  is  more  often  found  among  members  of  large  families  than 
among  those  of  small  ones.  It  is  reasonable  to  expect  this  would 
be  the  case,. owing  to  the  internal  discipline  among  members  of 
large  families,  and  to  the  wholesome  sustaining  and  restraining 
effects  of  family  pride  and  family  criticism.  Members  of  small 
families  are  apt  to  be  selfish,  and  when  the  smallness  of  the  family 
is  due  to  the  deaths  of  many  of  its  members  at  early  ages,  it  is 
some  evidence  either  of  weakness  of  the  family  constitution,  or  of 
deficiency  of  common  sense  or  of  affection  on  the  part  of  the  parents 
in  not  taking  better  care  of  them.  Mr.  Holland  quotes  in  his  letter 
to  me  a  piece  of  advice  by  Franklin  to  a  young  man  in  search  of 
a  wife, "  to  take  one  out  of  a  bunch  of  sisters,'  and  a  popular  saying 
that  kittens  brought  up  with  others  make  the  best  pets,  because 
they  have  learned  to  play  without  scratching.  Sir  W.  Gull  has 
remarked  that  those  candidates  for  the  Indian  Civil  Service  who 
are  members  of  large  families  are  on  the  whole  the  strongest." 

A  second  bit  of  advice  given  by  Franklin  is  perhaps  less  un- 
questionable :  "  From  the  marriages  that  have  fallen  under  my 
observation,"  he  says,  "  I  am  rather  inclined  to  think  that  early 
ones  stand  the  best  chances  of  happiness.  The  temper  and  habits 
of  the  young  are  not  become  so  stiff  and  uncomplying  as  when 
more  advanced  in  life :  they  form  more  easily  to  each  other,  and 
hence  many  occasions  of  disgust  are  removed.  .  .  .  '  Late 
children,'  says  the  Spanish  proverb,  '  are  early  orphans.'  With  us 
in  America  (1768)  marriages  are  generally  in  the  morning  of  life; 
our  children  are  therefore  educated  and  settled  in  the  world  by 
noon;  and  thus,  our  business  being  done,  we  have  an  afternoon 


190  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

and  evening  of  cheerful  leisure  to  ourselves.  .  .  By  these  early 
marriages  we  are  blessed  with  more  children  ;  and  from  the  mode 
among  us  founded  by  nature,  every  mother  suckling  and  nursing 
her  own  child  [1768],  more  of  them  are  raised.  Thence  the  swift 
progress  of  population  among  us,  unparalleled  in  Europe." 

"Marriages,"  says  Theodore  Parker,  "are  best  of  dissimilar 
materials  ; "  and  Coleridge  remarks,  similarly  :  "  You  may  depend 
upon  it  that  a  slight  contrast  of  character  is  very  material  to 
happiness  in  marriage."  But  would  it  be  possible  to  find  two 
individuals  who  did  not  present  "a  slight  contrast  of  character"? 
Coleridge  apparently  did  not  think  much  of  the  average  conjugal 
union  of  his  day :  "  To  the  many  of  both  sexes  I  am  well  aware," 
he  says,  "  this  Eden  of  matrimony  is  but  a  kitchen-garden,  a  thing 
of  profit  and  convenience,  in  an  even  temperature  between  indif- 
ference and  liking."  What  a  married  person  wants  is  "a  soul- 
mate  as  well  as  a  house  or  yoke-mate." 

Young  men  are  often  warned  not  to  marry  for  beauty,  because 
it  is  but  skin-deep.  But  surely  a  millimetre  of  beauty  is  worth 
more  than  a  yard  of  ugliness,  though  whitewashed  with  rank, 
money,  or  general  utility.  "  A  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  for  ever.'1 


OLD  MAIDS 

One  way  in  which  Romantic  Love  fulfils  its  mission  of  increasing 
the  amount  of  Personal  Beauty  in  the  world,  is  by  eliminating 
ugly  and  masculine  women  as  Old  Maids,  and  thus  preventing 
them  from  transmitting  their  characteristics  to  the  next  generation. 
Were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  the  average  man  is  quite  devoid  of 
sesthetic  taste  and  incapable  of  ardent  Romantic  Love,  and  that 
therefore  considerations  of  wealth  and  social  advantages  guide  him 
in  his  choice  of  a  wife,  ugly  women  would  rarely  be  found  outside 
the  ranks  of  Old  Maids.  As  it  is,  it  happens  only  too  often  that 
dowerless  beautiful  women  are  condemned  to  live  and  die  in  single 
blessedness,  while  the  ugly  people  fill  the  world  with  photographic 
copies  of  themselves. 

Why  is  it  that  every  refined  man  feels  an  instinctive  aversion 
to  masculine  women?  Because  a  masculine  wcmin  is  an  exception 
to  the  laws  of  nature,  a  lusus  naturae,  a  monstrosity.  We  find  even 
among  the  lower  animals  that  the  females  differ  widely,  as  a  rule, 
in  traits  and  appearance  from  the  males — sometimes  so  much  so 
that  there  are  instances  on  record  of  females  and  males  having  been 
for  a  time  supposed  to  belong  to  different  species  ;  and  the  differ- 


OLD  MAIDS  191 

ences  grow  greater  the  more  the  sexual  functions  are  developed 
and  specialised.  Yet  Amazons  occur  even  among  animals. 
"Characters  common  to  the  male,"  says  Darwin,  "are  occasionally 
developed  in  the  female  when  she,  grows  old  or  becomes  diseased, 
as,  for  instance,  when  the  common  hen  assumes  the  flowing  tail- 
feathers,  hackles,  combs,  spurs,  voice,  and  even  pugnacity  of  the 
cock." 

Among  the  warlike  Greeks,  who  knew  only  masculine  or  mono- 
sexual  love,  Amazons  were  naturally  esteemed,  as  they  did  not 
clash  with  their  feminine  ideal.  "  How  popular  a  subject  the 
Amazons  were  for  sculptors,"  says  Grote,  "we  learn  from  the  state- 
ment of  Pliny  that  the  most  distinguished  sculptors  executed 
Amazons,  and  that  this  subject  was  the  only  one  upon  which  a 
direct  comparison  could  be  made  between  them."  But  the  progress 
of  time,  as  we  have  seen,  has  more  and  more  differentiated  men 
and  women,  in  appearance  and  traits  of  character ;  and  the  modern 
ideal  of  woman  is  exclusively  feminine,  i.e.  devoid  of  hackles,  spurs, 
cock-a-doodle-doo,  and  pugnacity.  Hence  the  political  Virago 
movement  is  an  evil  which  will  never  make  any  progress,  thanks 
to  the  constant  elimination  of  masculine  women  through  that 
adorable  process  of  Sexual  Selection  known  as  Modern  Love. 

Masculine  women  are  always  condemned  to  bury  their  un- 
womanly proclivities  with  their  spinster-selves,  unless  they  are  very 
rich,  or  unless  they  can  find  a  correspondingly  effeminate  man  who 
wishes  to  neutralise  his  abnormalities  in  his  children  by  marrying 
a  spouse  whose  faults  are  an  excess  in  the  opposite  direction.  In 
such  a  case  a  virago  may  possibly  even  inspire  Romantic  Love, 
mirabile  dictuf 

An  ugly  woman,  on  the  other  hand,  need  never  despair  of  find- 
ing a  husband ;  she  has  at  least  eight  chances  of  getting  married. 
In  the  first  place,  she  may,  like  a  masculine  woman,  inspire  true 
Love  in  a  man  whose  faults  are  the  opposite  of  hers;  secondly,  she 
may  fall  in  love  with  a  man  of  faultless  proportions,  and  while  in 
Love  her  features  will  be  so  transfigured  and  beautified  that  he 
cannot  help  returning  her  Love;  thirdly,  she  may  meet  a  man  who, 
from  want  of  aesthetic  taste,  prefers  a  chromo  to  a  Titian ;  or  a 
fourth,  who  would  rather  marry  an  amiable  and  useful  ugly  girl  than 
a  spoiled  beauty.  Wealth  and  social  position  supply  two  more 
resources.  Accident  may  favour  her,  through  the  absence  of 
prettier  rivals,  giving  no  opportunities  for  odious  comparisons ;  | 
and,  finally,  she  may  meet  an  elderly  bachelor  who  has  wearied  of 
his  single  blessedness  and  longs  for  double  strife. 

As  for  those  Old  Maids  who  are  neither  ugly  nor  masculine, 


192  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

some  of  them  are  quondam  coquettes  who  practised  their  arts  just 
one  season  too  long  and  "got  left"  in  consequence;  others  are 
girls  whom  silly  methods  of  chaperonage  or  ill-luck  have  prevented 
from  making  the  acquaintance  of  men  whom  they  could  have 
respected  and  loved ;  so  that  it  is  often  the  most  refined  and  in- 
telligent women  who  are  thus  doomed  to  remain  single  because 
they  are  unwilling  to  marry  beneath  their  station,  socially  or  intel- 
lectually. They  form  that  class  ot  whom  De  Quincey  says,  that 
they  "combine  more  intelligence,  cultivation,  and  thoughtfulness 
than  any  other  in  Europe — the  class  of  unmarried  women  above 
twenty-five — an  increasing  class,  women  who,  from  mere  dignity 
of  character,  have  renounced  all  prospects  of  conjugal  and  parental 
life  rather  than  descend  into  habits  unsuitable  to  their  birth." 

Women  who  are  too  ugly  to  inspire  Love  may  nevertheless  feel 
proud  of  being  a  class  of  Vestal  Virgins  who  serve  the  cause  of 
Love  by  abstaining  from  adding  to  the  number  of  unattractive 
people  in  the  world  by  hereditary  transmission.  On  the  other 
hand,  Old  Maids  who  are  blessed  with  beauty,  owe  it  to  the  cause 
of  Love  to  make  every  effort,  consistent  with  feminine  modesty,  to 
get  married.  Not  only  because  their  children  will  be  beautiful, 
but  because  a  woman  who  never  marries  can  never  experience  the 
two  emotions  which  do  more  than  any  others  to  ennoble  and 
mature  the  feminine  mind — conjugal  and  maternal  love. 

Those  Old  Maids,  however,  who  have  not  yet  passed] their 
thirtieth  year,  may  even  claim  that  they  represent  the  most  perfect 
and  advanced  type  of  maidenhood,  and  look  down  on  girls  who 
marry  before  twenty-five  as  little  better  than  savages.  For  it  is 
well  known  that  the  age  of  marriage  advances  with  civilisation. 
Among  Australians  and  other  savages  girls  marry  at  eleven,  ten,  or 
even  nine  years ;  among  semi-civilised  Egyptians,  Hindoos,  etc., 
the  age  is  from  twelve  to  fourteen ;  southern  European  peoples 
marry  their  girls  between  the  ages  of  fifteen  and  eighteen ;  while 
with  those  nations  who  lead  modern  civilisation,  the  average  age 
of  marriage  for  a  woman  is  now  twenty-one,  with  a  tendency  to 
rise.  Does  it  not  follow  from  this,  by  inexorable  logic,  that  girls 
who  remain  single  at  twenty-five  or  twenty-nine  are  forerunners  of 
a  still  higher  type  of  civilisation  ?  and  that  the  only  trouble  with 
them  is  that  they  are  so  far  in  advance  of  their  age  and  civilisa- 
tion ?  True,  ungrateful  man  does  not  look  upon  them  in  that 
light ;  but  herein  they  share  the  fate  of  all  true  greatness.  There 
is  one  difference,  however,  between  undervalued  men  of  genius  and 
Old  Maids :  the  men  of  genius  admit  they  are  in  advance  of  their 
age,  and  are  proud  of  it ;  the  Old  Maids  never,  at  least,  hardly  ever, 


OLD  MAIDS  193 

In  one  of  his  most  fascinating  essays  on  The  Main  Currents  of 
Modern  Literature,  the  Danish  critic,  Dr.  Georg  Brandes,  discusses 
the  proper  age  of  feminine  Love  in  a  manner  which  Old  Maids  will 
especially  appreciate.  He  points  out  that  Eleonore,  the  heroine  of 
Benjamin  Constant's  novel  Adolphe,  is  the  first  specimen  of  a 
modern  type  subsequently  made  fashionable  by  Balzac  and  George 
Sand,  namely,  the  woman  of  thirty  in  Love.  Formerly,  as  Jules 
Janin  remarks,  the  woman  between  thirty  and  forty  years  of  age 
was  lost  for  passion,  for  romance,  and  the  drama ;  now  she  rules 
alone.  The  girl  of  sixteen,  as  adored  by  Racine,  Shakspere, 
Moliere,  Voltaire,  Ariosto,  Byron,  Lesage,  Scott,  is  no  more  to  be 
found.  And  Mme.  Emile  de  Girardin  thus  attempts  to  defend 
Balzac :  "  Is  it  Balzac's  fault  that  the  age  of  thirty  to-day  is  the 
age  of  love  1  Balzac  is  compelled  to  depict  passion  where  he  finds 
it,  and  at  this  day  it  is  not  to  be  found  in  tiie  heart  of  a  girl  of 
sixteen." 

So  far  as  these  remarks  are  true  they  afford  a  new  confirmation 
of  my  assertions  that  true  Romantic  Love  is  dependent  on  a  certain 
amount  of  intellectual  power  and  maturity,  aud  that  in  conse- 
quence man  loves  more  deeply  than  woman  at  the  age  preceding 
marriage.  In  England  and  America  novelists  still  persist  in 
making  women  love  at  any  age  from  eighteen,  and  they  have  a 
right  to  do  so,  because  in  these  two  countries  women  are  wel« 
enough  educated  and  experienced  in  life  at  eighteen  to  be  able  to 
love.  In  France  girls  receive  such  a  superficial  education  that 
they  are  ordinarily  quite  impervious  to  any  deep  emotions  before 
they  are  either  Old  Maids  or  married.  But  in  most  cases  they  are 
married  before  twenty  without  regard  to  their  own  wishes.  And 
then  happens  what  is  indicated  in  Fuller's  aphorism  :  "  It  is  to  be 
feared  that  they  who  marry  where  they  do  not  love,  will  love 
where  they  do  not  marry."  And  hence  it  is  that  the  only  love 
depicted  by  French  novelists  and  playwrights  is  the  adulterous 
love  of  a  faithless  wife.  Could  anything  more  vividly  illustrate 
the  criminal  absurdities  of  French  education  and  the  French  system 
of  chaperonage  ? 

In  France  a  girl  is  not  even  allowed  to  cross  the  street  alone 
until  she  is  willing  to  assume  the  name  and  with  it  the  compara- 
tive freedom  of  an  Old  Maid.  In  Spain,  the  author  of  Cosas  de 
Espana  tells  us,  Old  Maids  are  rare  because  a  girl  generally 
accepts  her  first  offer ;  and  there  are  probably  not  many  girls  who 
do  not  receive  at  least  one  offer  in  their  life — masculine  women 
always  excepted.  In  Russia,  where  women,  according  to  Schwei- 
ger-Lerchenfeld,  enjoy  almost  as  much  liberty  as  in  America,  a 

o 


194  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

curious  custom  prevails  by  which  a  girl  of  uncertain  age  may 
escape  the  appellation  of  Old  Maid.  She  may  leave  home  and 
become  lost  for  two  or  three  years  in  Paris,  London,  or  some  other 
howling  wilderness  of  humanity.  Then  she  may  return  to  her 
friends  neither  as  maid  nor  wife,  but  as  a  widow.  And  it  is 
"good  form"  in  Kussian  society  to  accept  this  myth  without 
asking  for  details. 

Finally  the  important  question  remains :  "  What  is  an  Old 
Maid?"  That  depends  very  much  on  individuals  and  the  care 
they  take  of  their  Health  and  Beauty.  Some  women  are  Old 
Maids  at  twenty,  the  majority  at  thirty,  and  some  not  before  forty ; 
while  those  girls  who  will  read  the  chapters  on  Personal  Beauty  in 
the  last  part  of  this  treatise,  and  follow  all  the  advice  there  given, 
will  never  become  Old  Maids  at  all,  but  will  be  gobbled  up  before 
twenty -three  by  eager  bachelors  previously  considered  hopeless 
cases  of  celibacy. 

Even  if  it  were  possible  to  name  a  definite  age  as  that  when  a 
girl  begins  to  be  an  Old  Maid,  it  would  be  a  bit  of  useless  informa- 
tion, because  nobody  ever  knows  how  old  a  woman  is.  Often  it  is 
easier  to  tell  a  woman's  age  by  her  conversation  than  by  her  looks  : 
some  incipient  Old  Maids  constantly  hint  at  their  former  numerous 
flirtations,  which  they  never  did  while  they  really  had  them. 


BACHELORS 

''Pirates  of  Love  who  know  no  duty." 

Of  all  the  brutes  enumerated  in  the  human  branch  of  zoology 
the  deliberate  bachelor  is  the  most  unreasonable  and  selfish.  Un- 
reasonable, because  he  voluntarily  deprives  himself  of  connubial 
bliss,  domestic  comforts,  and  the  prospect  of  being  cheered  and 
cared  for  in  his  old  age  by  a  family  of  loving  children.  Selfish, 
because  at  present  the  bread-winning  arrangements  are  almost 
entirely  framed  for  man's  convenience  alone,  wherefore  it  is  his 
duty  to  support  a  wife. 

Masculine  selfishness,  however,  is  not  exclusively  responsible  for 
the  rapid  increase  of  bachelordom.  The  women  themselves  are 
largely  at  fault — in  two  ways.  The  modern  tendency  of  concen- 
trating population  in  large  cities  makes  domestic  life  a  much  more 
expensive  affair  than  it  is  in  smaller  towns  or  in  rural  districts ; 
and  at  the  same  time  women  are  gradually  invading  every  sphere 
of  masculine  employment,  thus  reducing  wages  by  competition  and 
making  it  more  and  more  difficult  for  a  man  to  earn  an  income 


BACHELORS  195 

which  allows  him  to  marry.  This  aspect  of  the  question,  once 
before  alluded  to,  is  one  which  the  advocates  of  Woman's  Rights 
are  too  apt  to  ignore.  For  the  benefit  of  poor  young  girls,  and 
widows,  and  old  maids,  it  is,  indeed,  but  just  that  various  employ- 
ments adapted  to  female  hands  should  be  thrown  open  to  them  and 
properly  remunerated ;  but  if  the  effect  of  this  is  simply  and  con- 
stantly to  increase  the  number  of  single  poor  women,  by  making 
marriage  impossible,  what  is  gained  by  the  change1?  A  certain 
amount  of  misery  is  inevitable  in  the  world ;  and  it  seems  better 
that  it  should  be  distributed  where  it  will  not  imperil  the  popu- 
larity and  possibility  of  marriage. 

After  all,  self-supporting  women  must  always  be  the  exception, 
not  the  rule ;  for  it  is  the  destiny  of  the  vast  majority  of  women 
to  be  wives;  and  regarding  these  even  Mr.  Mill  admits  "it  is  not 
...  a  desirable  custom  that  the  wife  should  contribute  by  her 
labour  to  the  income  of  the  family."  Now  surely  it  would  be  most 
absurd,  as  some  "strong-minded"  women  are  trying  to  do,  to 
arrange  the  educational  scheme  of  all  women  so  as  to  benefit  the 
exceptional  women  who  are  excluded  from  matrimony.  A  thousand 
times  more  important  is  it  to  change  woman's  education  so  as  to 
enable  her  to  look  after  her  household  affairs.  It  is  by  neglecting 
to  do  this  that  women  supply  the  second  cause  for  the  increasing 
prevalence  of  Bachelors.  Every  man  is  expected  to  learn  his  trade 
properly  before  marriage ;  but  woman's  proper  occupation — the  art 
of  taking  care  of  home  and  making  it  a  paradise,  is  commonly  sup- 
posed to  be  a  thing  that  can  be  learned  easily  enough  after  mar- 
riage. Even  when  a  woman  is  so  wealthy  that  she  is  not  obliged 
to  do  any  housework  at  all,  she  should,  like  a  ship's  captain,  learn 
all  about  the  duties  of  subordinates,  else  she  will  be  unable  to 
command  them  properly.  A  captain  who  displayed  ignorance  on 
any  point  before  his  sailors  would  lose  their  respect  and  attitude  of 
prompt  obedience ;  and  it  has  been  suggested  that  one  reason  why 
American  women,  especially,  have  so  much  trouble  with  their 
servants,  is  because  they  know  so  little  about  domestic  economy 
that  the  servants,  ignorant  as  they  are,  become  arrogant  because 
of  their  superior  knowledge. 

On  the  subject  of  woman's  sphere,  Herbert  Spencer  has  written 
words  which  should  be  hung  in  golden  letters  in  every  schoolroom  : 
"  When  we  remember  that  up  from  the  lowest  savagery  civilisa- 
tion has,  among  other  results,  brought  about  an  increasing  exemp- 
tion of  women  from  bread-winning  labour,  and  in  the  highest 
societies  they  have  become  most  restricted  to  domestic  duties  and  the 
rearing  of  children ;  we  may  be  struck  by  the  anomaly  that  at  the 


196  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

present  time  restriction  to  indoor  occupations  has  come  to  be 
regarded  as  a  grievance,  and  a  claim  is  made  to  free  competition 
with  men  in  all  outdoor  occupations.  .  .  .  Any  extensive  change 
in  the  education  of  women,  made  with  the  view  of  fitting  them 
for  business  and  professions,  would  be  mischievous.  If  women 
comprehended  all  that  is  contained  in  the  domestic  sphere,  iliey 
would  ask  no  other.  If  they  could  see  all  that  is  implied  in  the 
right  education  of  children,  to  a  full  conception  of  which  no  man 
has  yet  risen,  much  less  any  woman,  they  would  seek  no  higher 
function  "  (Principles  of  Sociology,  vol.  i.  §  340). 

When  every  woman  has  learned  how  to  cultivate  flowers  and 
vegetables  in  her  domestic  garden  at  the  same  time,  the  millennium 
will  have  arrived,  and  the  word  Bachelor  be  found  only  in  Diction- 
aries of  Antiquities. 

Women  are  sometimes  held  responsible  in  still  another  way  for 
the  continuance  of  Bachelors  in  single  boredom,  viz.  by  refusing 
their  Love  and  breaking  their  hearts.  But  surely,  as  the  shep- 
herdess in  Don  Quixote  has  so  eloquently  shown,  it  does  not  at  all 
follow  that  if  a  man  falls  in  Love  with  a  woman,  she  must  neces- 
sarily fall  in  Love  with  him ;  and  if  she  does  not  love  him,  it-  is 
her  duty  not  to  marry  him. 

Besides,  a  broken  heart  is  a  very  rare  article  in  this  world,  and 
every  nation  has  discovered  a  peculiar  local  remedy  for  it :  the 
Spaniards  by  stabbing  the  girl  who  broke  it ;  the  Italians  by 
annihilating  the  rival ;  the  Germans  by  soaking  the  fragments  in 
Rhine  wine ;  the  Englishmen  by  a  change  of  air ;  and  ultimately 
they  all  follow  the  example  of  the  Frenchman  who,  on  the  day 
following  the  catastrophe,  casts  his  eyes  about  for  a  new  charmer  ; 
or,  if  they  do  not,  but  like  a  snail  withdraw  into  their  shell  for 
the  rest  of  their  life,  abusing  all  women  as  heartless,  they  are 
bigger  fools  than  they  look.  What  would  you  say  of  a  fisherman 
who  went  out  for  a  day's  sport  and  returned  after  an  hour  because 
the  first  trout  that  nibbled  at  the  bait  escaped  1 

It  is  the  happy  privilege  of  every  Bachelor  to  have  loved  fully 
and  deeply  once  in  his  life  ;  but  if  his  passion  is  not  appreciated, 
it  is  his  duty  to  try  again  ;  for,  even  as  a  stolen  kiss  is  not  a  real 
kiss  because  it  lacks  the  thrill  of  mutuality,  so  Love  is  not  Love 

**  Till  heart  with  heart  in  concord  beats, 
And  the  lover  is  beloved." — WOKDS  WORTH. 

True,  La  Rochefoucauld  says  that  "  The  pleasure  of  love  is 
in  loving ; "  and  Shelley  echoes  the  same  sentiment  in  his 
Prometheus — 


GENIUS  AND  MARRIAGE  197 

"  All  love  is  sweet, 
Given  or  returned.    .  .   . 
They  who  inspire  it  most  are  fortunate 
As  I  am  now  ;  but  those  who  ieel  it  most,  are  happier  still. " 

Yet  neither  the  English  poet  nor  the  French  essayist  appears  to 
have  fathomed  the  full  depth  of  the  problem.  It  is  as  incorrect 
to  say,  "  the  pleasure  of  love  is  in  loving,"  as  to  say,  the  pleasure 
of  Love  is  in  being  loved.  To  be  loved  by  one  I  do  not  love  is  a 
matter  of  complete  indifference,  except  so  far  as  my  Pride  or  Pity 
may  be  involved.  To  love  where  I  am  not  loved,  or  am  left  in 
uncertainty,  is  more  of  anguish  than  of  delight.  To  attain  the 
highest  ecstacy  of  Love  I  must  both  be  in  Love  and  able  to  say  at 
the  same  time,  "  she  loves  me."  Reciprocity  is  not  only  "  that 
which  alone  gives  stability  to  love,"  as  Coleridge  remarks,  but  that 
without  which  consummate  Love  is  impossible. 

Apparent  exceptions  occur  only  when  the  illusion  of  being  loved 
is  so  vividly  kept  up  by  the  imagination  as  to  counterfeit  reality ; 
as  in  the  case  of  Eleouore,  who  "became  so  intoxicated  with  her 
Love  that  she  saw  it  double  and  mistook  her  own  feeling  for  that 
of  both  "  (Dr.  Brandes). 

/~*  Therefore  a  Bachelor  who  has  been  unsnccessfol  in  his  first  or 
f  second  Love  has  never  enjoyed  the  highest  bliss  a  human  BOU!  can 
attain,  and  is  bound  to  try  "again.  Nor  need  he  ever  despair. 
There  are  a  thousand  Juliets  in  the  world  for  every  man,  and  all 
he  needs  is  the  good  luck  to  meet  the  one  adapted  to  him :  for  she 
is  his  as  soon  as  found;  though  she  may  at  first  have  the 
"cunning  to  be  strange." 

GENIUS  AND  MARRIAGE 

Though  it  is  man's  duty  and  destiny  to  get  married,  yet  the 
concurrent  testimony  of  several  famous  authors  appears  to  indicate 
that  there  is  one  thing  which  excuses  celibacy,  and  may  even  make 
it  a  virtue — and  that  thing  is  the  possession  of  Genius.  Bacon 
claims  that  "  certainly  the  best  works,  and  of  greatest  merit  for 
the  public,  have  proceeded  from  the  unmarried  or  childless  men." 
A  more  modern  philosopher,  Schopenhauer,  expresses  himself  to 
the  same  effect:  "For  men  of  higher  intellectual  avocation,  for 
poets,  philosophers,  for  all  those,  in  general,  who  devote  themselves 
to  science  and  art,  celibacy  is  preferable  to  married  life,  because 
the  conjugal  yoke  prevents  them  from  creating  great  works." 

The  same  counsel  is  indirectly  given  in  Moore's  Life  of  Byron, 
vr-here  he  argues  that  "  In  looking  back  through  the  lives  of  the 


198  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

most  illustrious  poets — the  class  of  intellect  in  which  the  charac- 
teristic features  of  genius  are,  perhaps,  most  strongly  marked — we 
shall  find  that  with  scarcely  one  exception,  from  Homer  down  to 
Lord  Byron,  they  have  been,  in  their  several  degrees,  restless  and 
solitary  spirits,  with  minds  wrapped  up,  like  silkworms,  in  their 
own  tasks,  either  strangers  or  rebels  to  domestic  ties,  and  bearing 
about  with  them,  a  deposit  for  posterity  in  their  souls,  to  the  jealous 
watching  and  enriching  of  which  almost  all  other  thoughts  and 
considerations  have  been  sacrificed." 

"Either  strangers  or  rebels  to  domestic  ties."  Among  the 
strangers,  Moore  names  Newton,  Gassendi,  Galileo,  Descartes, 
Bayle,  Locke,  Leibnitz,  and  Hume,  to  whom  may  be  added  Kant, 
Schopenhauer,  Handel,  Beethoven,  Schubert,  Plato,  and  many 
others. 

Quite  as  large  is  the  list  of  "  rebels  to  domestic  ties "  among 
men  of  poetic  genius.  Says  Moore :  "  The  coincidence  is  no 
less  striking  than  saddening  that,  on  the  list  of  married  poets  who 
have  been  unhappy  in  their  homes,  there  should  already  be  found 
four  such  illustrious  names  as  Dante,  Milton,  Shakspere,  and 
Dryden."  "  The  poet  Dante,  a  wanderer  away  from  wife  and 
children,  passed  the  whole  of  a  restless  life  in  nursing  his  immortal 
dream  of  Beatrice."  "  The  dates  of  the  birth  of  his  [Shakspere's] 
children,  compared  with  that  of  his  removal  from  Stratford,  the 
total  omission  of  his  wife's  name  in  the  first  draft  of  his  will,  and 
the  bitter  sarcasm  of  the  bequest  by  which  he  remembers  her 
afterwards — all  prove  beyond  a  doubt  his  separation  from  the  lady 
early  in  life,  and  his  unfriendly  feeling  towards  her  at  the  close." 
"  Milton's  first  wife,  it  is  well  known,  ran  away  from  him  within 
a  month  after  their  marriage,  '  disgusted,'  says  Phillips,  '  with  his 
spare  diet  and  hard  study,'  and  his  later  domestic  misery  is  univer- 
sally known."  "  The  poet  Young,  with  all  his  parade  of  domestic 
sorrows,  was,  it  appears,  a  neglectful  husband  and  a  harsh  father." 

Sir  Walter  Scott  remarks,  in  his  Life  of  Dryden:  "  The  wife 
of  one  who  is  to  gain  his  livelihood  by  poetry,  or  by  any  labour  (if 
any  there  be)  equally  exhausting,  must  either  have  taste  enough  to 
relish  her  husband's  performances,  or  good-nature  sufficiently  to 
pardon  his  infirmities.  It  was  Dryden's  misfortune  that  Lady 
Elizabeth  had  neither  the  one  nor  the  other;  and  I  dismiss  the 
disagreeable  subject  by  observing,  that  on  no  one  occasion  when  a 
sarcasm  against  matrimony  could  be  introduced,  has  our  author 
failed  to  season  it  with  such  bitterness,  as  spoke  of  an  inward 
consciousness  of  domestic  misery." 

Richard  "Wagner  when  a  young  man  married  an  actress,  "pretty 


GENIUS  AND  MARRIAGE  199 

as  B,  picture  " ;  but  she  appears  to  have  had  little  sympathy  with 
his  ambitions,  so  he  lived  apart  from  her.  Subsequently  he  was 
very  happy  with  Cosima,  the  daughter  of  Liszt,  who  did  appreciate 
his  genius,  Liszt  himself,  after  living  some  years  with  the 
Countess  D'Agoult  in  Italy,  separated  from  her.  The  girl  whom 
Haydn  married  soon  turned  out  a  shrew,  who  had  no  sympathy 
whatever  with  his  musical  genius.  Berlioz  was  one  of  the  most 
passionate  of  lovers :  "  Oh,  that  I  could  find  her,  the  Juliet,  the 
Ophelia  that  my  heart  calls  to.  That  I  could  drink  in  the  intoxi- 
cation of  that  mingled  joy  and  sadness  that  only  true  love  knows  ! 
Could  I  but  rest  in  her  arms  one  autumn  evening,  rocked  by  the 
north  wind  on  some  wild  heath,  and  sleeping  my  last,  sad  sleep." 
A  few  years  after  these  rapturous  effusions  he  arranged  a  separation 
ct  I'aimable  from  his  wife,  his  former  flame,  and  left  her  to  die  in 
solitude  and  misery. 

Handel,  after  all,  was  the  wisest  of  the  composers.  He  was 
never  in  Love,  and  had  an  aversion  to  marriage.  In  1707  he  went 
to  Lu'beck  to  compete  for  the  place  of  successor  to  the  famous 
organist  Buxtehude;  but  when  he  found  that  one  of  the  conditions 
of  obtaining  the  place  was  the  compulsory  privilege  of  marrying 
the  daughter  of  his  predecessor,  he  got  alarmed  and  fled  precipi- 
tately. 

Besides  the  disposition  to  wrap  up  their  minds,  like  silkworms, 
in  their  own  tasks,  Poverty  and  the  extreme  difficulty  of  finding 
congenial  companions  appear  to  be  the  principal  causes  that  have 
tended  to  make  men  of  genius  strangers  or  rebels  to  domestic  ties. 

There  is  an  old  saying  that  if  Poverty  comes  in  by  one  window, 
Love  goes  out  by  another.  But  Poverty,  unfortunately,  seems  to 
be  an  almost  necessary  companion  of  Genius,  at  least  in  the  early 
stages  of  its  career,  till  the  inertia  natural  to  the  human  brain  has 
been  overcome.  It  is  so  much  easier  for  the  richest  soils  to  grow 
a  luxuriant  crop  of  weeds  than  a  useful  crop  which  needs  constant 
care,  that  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  wealth  is  responsible  for  the 
loss  of  much  Genius  to  the  world.  There  have  been  men  of  genius 
in  whom  the  creative  impulse  was  so  strong,  and  the  pleasure  of 
creating  so  sweet — Goethe,  Schopenhauer,  Byron,  etc. — that  they 
needed  not  the  goad  of  hunger ;  but  as  a  rule  a  well-filled  pocket- 
book  does  not  encourage  the  habit  of  "infinite  painstaking,"  which 
is  essential  to  Genius.  But  if  a  genius  marries  while  he  is  poor, 
he  will  have  to  waste  his  time  on  rapid,  ephemeral  work  to  support 
his  family ;  which  will  leave  him  neither  leisure  nor  energy  for 
work  of  enduring  value.  Hence  he  should  either  not  marry  at  all 
j>r  wait  till  he  has  an  assured  income.  If  money-marriages  are 


200  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

ever  justifiable,  they  are  in  such  cases;  and  rich  girls  should  make 
it  the  one  object  of  life  to  capture  a  man  of  Genius,  so  as  to  give 
him  leisure  for  immortal  work.  It  appears,  indeed,  as  if  a  sort  cf 
Conjugal  Pride  of  this  description  were  becoming  fashionable ;  for 
one  hears  every  month  of  some  author  or  artist  marrying  an  heiress. 
This  is  certainly  the  easiest  way  for  a  woman  to  become  immortal ; 
and  what  is  a  coquette's  gratified  ephemeral  vanity,  compared  with 
the  proud  consciousness  of  passing  down  to  posterity  linked  with 
an  immortal  name,  and  of  having  helped  to  make  that  name  im- 
mortal by  removing  the  necessity  for  bread-winning  drudgery ! 

Furthermore,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  number  of  persons 
able  to  read  a  work  of  genius  at  sight,  as  it  were,  is  growing  larger 
every  year.  Great  men  do  not  have  to  wait  for  recognition  so 
Ipng  as  formerly,  and  this  enables  them  to  neglect  ephemeral 
drudgery  in  favour  of  creative  work. 

As  there  has  been  an  unparalleled  unfolding  and  increase  in 
feminine  charms,  both  of  body  and  mind,  within  the  last  half- 
century,  it  is  not  too  optimistic  to  hope  that  the  other  source  of 
domestic  difficulties  among  men  of  genius — the  extreme  difficulty 
of  finding  a  congenial  companion — will  also  be  removed,  in  course 
of  time.  Men  of  genius,  as  Moore  remarks,  have  such  rich  resources 
of  thinking  within  themselves,  that  "the  society  of  those  less 
gifted  than  themselves  becomes  often  a  restraint  and  burden  to 
which  not  all  the  charms  of  friendship  or  even  love  can  reconcile 
them."  To  be  completely  happy  a  Genius  should  accordingly  have 
a  wife  as  remarkable  among  women  for  the  womanly  qualities  of 
receptivity,  grace,  and  sympathy,  as  he  is  among  men  for  the  manly 
quality  of  creative  energy.  Yet  if  it  is  so  difficult  for  an  ordinary 
man  to  meet  his  ordinary  Juliet,  how  much  more  so  will  it  ever  be 
for  an  extraordinary  man  to  find  an  extraordinary  Juliet ! 

Thanks  to  their  passion  for  Beauty,  men  of  Genius  are  too 
prone  to  follow  the  impulse  of  the  moment  and  marry  a  pretty 
doll,  in  the  hope  of  being  able  to  educate  her  into  an  attractive 
companion.  Unluckily  it  rarely  happens  that  the  minds  of  these 
beauties  are  "  wax  to  receive  and  marble  to  retain."  Pretty  girls 
are  commonly  lazy — spoiled  by  the  thought  that  their  beauty  atones 
for  everything,  and  regardless  of  the  future  when  this  apology  for 
indolence  will  have  lost  its  persuasiveness. 

Among  the  objections  to  the  celibacy  of  Genius,  the  strongest  is 
supplied  by  the  laws  of  heredity — the  desirability  of  having  their 
superior  mental  qualities — often  associated  with  corresponding 
physical  beauty — transmitted  to  the  next  generation.  Genius,  it 
is  true,  depends  on  so  many  fortuitous  circumstances  that  cases  of 


GENIUS  AND  LOVE  201 

direct  transmission  from  father  to  son  are  rare  enough ;  and  Mr. 
Gallon's  researches  show  that  "  the  ablest  child  of  one  gifted  pah- 
is  not  likely  to  be  as  gifted  as  the  ablest  of  all  the  children  of  very 
many  mediocre  pairs ;"  and  that  "  the  more  exceptional  the  gift, 
the  more  exceptional  will  be  the  good  fortune  of  a  parent  who  has 
a  son  who  equals,  and  still  more  if  he  has  a  son  who  overpasses 
him."  Nevertheless,  it  remains  true  that  "the  children  of  a  gifted 
pair  are  much  more  likely  to  be  gifted  than  the  children  of  a 
mediocre  pair."  Just  as  a  professor's  son  is  born  with  a  brain 
naturally  more  plastic  and  receptive  than  that  of  a  young  savage  or 
peasant,  so  the  children  of  a  Genius  who  has  not  shattered  his 
health  by  overwork  or  dissipation  are  likely  to  be  of  a  mental 
calibre  superior  to  that  of  an  ordinary  professor's  son.  So  that  it 
is  the  duty  of  a  man  of  genius  to  get  married  even  at  a  sacrifice  of 
personal  happiness — provided  that  sacrifice  is  not  so  great  as  to 
interfere  with  his  intellectual  duties. 


GENIUS  AND  LOVE 

If  we  take  the  word  Genius  in  the  Kantian,  imaginative,  or 
aesthetic  sense,  it  may  be  said  that  all  Geniuses  are  amorous;  and 
that  the  degree  of  their  greatness  may  as  a  rule  be  measured  by 
their  susceptibility  to  feminine  charms.  The  most  poetic  part  of 
the  Scriptures  is  the  Song  of  Solomon  with  its  glowing  pictures  of 
feminine  charms.  Homer,  though  he  lived  long  before  the  age  of 
Romantic  Love,  spent  his  life  in  describing  the  mischief  caused  by 
Helen's  beauty.  Among  the  Roman  poets  the  most  original  was 
also  the  most  amorous.  As  Professor  Sellar  remarks  of  Ovid,  "  In 
the  most  creative  periods  of  English  literature  he  seems  to  have 
been  more  read  than  any  other  ancient  poet,  not  even  excepting 
Virgil ;  and  it  was  on  the  most  creative  minds,  such  as  those  of 
Marlowe,  Spenser,  Shakspere,  Milton,  and  Dryden,  that  he  acted 
most  powerfully  .  .  .  and  although  the  spirit  of  antiquity  is  better 
understood  now  than  it  was  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies, yet  in  the  capacity  of  appreciating  works  of  brilliant  fancy 
we  can  claim  no  superiority  over  the  centuries  which  produced 
Spenser,  Shakspere,  and  Milton,  nor  over  those  which  produced 
the  great  Italian,  French,  and  Flemish  painters,"  to  whom  Ovul 
supplied  such  abundant  material 

Coming  to  more  recent  times,  we  have  seen  that  Dante,  the 
first  modern  poet,  was  also  the  first  modern  lover,  rarely  if  ever 
surpassed  in  rapturous  adoration.  How  the  greatest  of  the  Spanish 


202  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

bards  was  influenced  by  feminine  beauty  may  be  inferred  from  the 
glowing  descriptions  of  it  and  its  influence  in  Don  Quixote ;  and 
as  for  Shakspere,  even  had  he  not  written  Romeo  and  Juliet,  his 
early  poems  alone  would  prove  him  to  have  been  in  his  youth  every 
inch  a  lover ;  for  no  one,  not  even  with  Shakspere's  imagination, 
could  have  painted  such  unique  feelings  with  his  realistic  and 
infallible  touch,  unless  he  had  felt  them  more  than  once  and  had 
them  indelibly  branded  on  his  heart's  memory. 

In  the  galaxy  of  German  poets  Goethe  ranks  first,  owing  to  his 
manysidedness.  Yet  he  lacked  the  very  highest  of  literary  gifts — 
wit ;  and  in  this  respect  as  well  as  through  his  deeper  insight  into 
Modern  Love,  Heine  must  be  rated  higher  than  Goethe.  Heine's 
personal  loves  are  but  thinly  covered  over  by  the  clear  amber  of 
his  lyrics,  in  which  they  are  imbedded.  Goethe's  loves  have  become 
proverbial  for  their  number — Katchen,  Friederike,  Lili,  Charlotte, 
Christiane,  etc.  Schiller,  Wieland,  Biirger,  Bodenstedt,  and  the 
lesser  lights  might  all  have  appended  a  D.L.,  or  Doctor  of  Love, 
to  their  names. 

Shelley,  Mr.  Hamilton  tells  us,  "had  an  irresistible  natural 
tendency  to  fall  in  love"  ;  and  Byron,  speaking  of  one  of  his  loves, 
says,  "  I  had  and  have  been  attached  fifty  times  since,  yet  I  recol- 
lect all  we  said  to  each  other,  all  our  caresses,  her  features,  my 
restlessness,  sleeplessness,"  etc.  And  in  the  next  chapter  on 
"  Genius  in  Love,"  we  shall  meet  with  numerous  similar  cases  of 
English,  German,  and  French  men  of  genius  constantly  in  Love. 

To  account  for  this  amorous  propensity  of  Genius  is  easy  enough. 
Genius  means  creative  power  allied  with  a  taste  for  the  Beautiful. 
This  taste  may  be  gratified  by  the  contemplation  of  the  beauties  of 
Nature — the  creative  power  by  reproducing  them  on  canvas  or 
manuscript.  But  Nature's  masterpiece  is  lovely  woman,  who  not 
only  yields  the  highest  gratification  of  artistic  taste,  but  inspires 
Love  :  and  what  is  Love  but  a  creative  impulse — a  desire  to  link 
one's  name  and  personality,  in  future  generations,  with  this  embodi- 
ment of  consummate  human  beauty  ? 

Shakspere's 

"  Love  looks  not  with  the  eyes  but  with  the  mind, 
-  And  therefore  is  winged  Cupid  painted  blind," 

suggests  another  reason  why  men  of  Genius  are  eternally  involved 
in  Love-affairs.  The  lover  becomes  infatuated  not  with  the  girl  he 
sees  but  with  the  girl  he  imagines,  using  her  features  ?s  a  mere 
sketch  to  be  filled  up  ad  libitum — 


GENIUS  AND  LOVE  20» 

i 

"  Such  tricks  hath  strong  imagination, 
That  if  it  would  but  apprehend  some  joy, 
It  comprehends  some  bringer  of  that  joy ; 
Or  in  the  night,  imagining  some  fear, 
How  easy  is  a  bush  supposed  a  bear  !" 

To  imagine  a  feeling  is  to  entertain  it;  for  an  imagined  im- 
pression revives  the  same  cerebral  processes  that  were  aroused  by 
the  original  sense  impression.  In  ordinary  minds  the  remembered 
image  of  a  girl's  lovely  features,  the  echo  of  her  sweet  voice,  are 
much  fainter  than  the  original  sight  and  sound;  whereas  the 
imagination  of  genius  paints  a  face  and  recalls  a  voice  as  vividly  as 
if  they  were  present :  so  that  here  to  think  of  Love  is  to  be  in 
Love — pro  tempore. 

Besides  his  refined  taste  and  vivid  imagination — which  retouches 
every  defective  negative — it  is  the  natural  depth  of  his  emotions 
that  urges  a  Genius  to  fall  in  Love  with  every  lovely  woman. 
Passions  are  like  dogs  :  the  big  ones  need  more  food  than  the  little 
ones.  A  peasant  cannot  experience  the  subtle  and  multitudinous 
emotions  that  fill  the  heart  of  an  artist,  a  statesman,  a  scientific 
discoverer ;  much  less  the  complex  group  of  ethereal  emotions  that 
make  up  Romantic  Love.  The  higher  we  rise  in  the  intellectual 
scale,  the  more  varied,  complex,  and  deep  are  the  emotional  groups 
which  delight  and  torment  the  soul.  As  Genius  represents  the 
climax  of  intellectual  power,  Love  the  climax  of  emotional  intensity, 
is  it  wonderful  that  there  should  be  an  affinity  between  the  two  ^ 
The  higher  a  mountain  peak  the  more  does  it  attract  every  passing 
cloud  and  clasp  it  to  its  breast — hoping — vainly  hoping — to  warm 
a  heart  chilled  by  its  isolation  above  the  rest  of  the  world. 

As  men  of  genius  are  more  prone  to  love  than  common  sluggish 
minds,  it  is  a  lucky  fact,  for  the  future  growth  of  Romantic  Love, 
that  Genius  grows  more  and  more  abundant — pace  the  laudatores 
temporis  acti  who  ignorantly  compare  the  number  of  living  geniuses 
with  all  those  that  have  ever  been — as  if  they  had  all  lived  at  one 
epoch.  It  may  even  be  granted  that  there  have  been  epochs  that 
had  more  geniuses  than  we  have  at  present;  but  of  genius  there  is 
more  to-day  than  ever  in  the  world's  history.  We  see  almost  daily 
in  ephemeral  periodicals  lines  and  epigrams  worthy  of  the  highest 
genius,  written  by  men  whose  names  perhaps  will  never  be  known. 
Shaksperep,  indeed,  will  always  tower  Mont  Blanc-like  over  all 
other  peaks  ;  but  if  summits  of  the  second  magnitude  seem  less 
imposing  to-day  than  formerly,  it  is  because  the  general  level  of 
creativeness  has  been  raised  a  few  thousand  feet.  The  mountains 
*hat  enclose  the  Engadiue  valley,  though  10,000  to  12,000  feet  in 


204  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

height,  seem  only  half  as  high,  because  the  valley  from  which 
you  see  them  lies  at  an  altitude  of  6000  feet. 


GENIUS  IN  LOVE 

Were  there  not  a  natural  affinity  between  Genius  and  Love, 
authors  and  artists  would  cultivate  Love  as  the  source  of  their 
deepest  inspiration.  For  if  it  makes  a  temporary  poet  of  every 
peasant,  what  must  be  its  effect  in  exalting  the  poet's  inborn 
power ! 

"When  beauty  fires  the  blood,  how  love  exalts  the  mind  ;" 
Love 

"  Which  awakes  the  sleepy  vigour  of  the  soul ; " 
and  first 

"  Softened  the  fierce,  and  made  the  coward  bold." — DEYDEN. 

"  For  indeed  I  knew 
Of  no  more  subtle  master  under  heaven 
Than  is  the  maiden  passion  for  a  maid 
Not  only  to  keep  down  the  base  in  man, 
But  teach  high  thought  and  amiable  words, 
And  courtliness,  and  the  desire  of  fame, 
And  love  of  truth,  and  all  that  makes  a  man." — TENNYSON. 

The  Love  of  men  of  Genius,  as  distinguished  from  that  of 
ordinary  mortals,  is  characterised  by  five  traits — Precocity,  Ex- 
travagant Ardour,  Fickleness,  Multiplicity,  and  Fictitiousness — 
which  must  be  briefly  considered  in  succession. 

I. — PBECOCITY 

Turgenieff  makes  the  narrator  of  one  of  his  novelettes  speak  of 
his  first  Love  as  having  been  experienced  at  the  age  of  six.  That 
this  is  not  a  poetic  license  is  abundantly  proved  by  historic  facts. 
"  Dante,  we  know,  was  but  nine  years  old,"  says  Moore,  "  when, 
at  a  May-day  festival,  he  saw  and  fell  in  love  with  Beatrice;  and 
Alfieri,  who  was  himself  a  precocious  lover,  considers  such  early 
sensibility  to  be  an  unerring  sign  of  a  soul  formed  for  the  fine  arts. 
.  .  .  Canova  used  to  say  that  he  perfectly  well  remembered  having 
been  in  love  when  but  five  years  old." 

Byron's  first  Love  was  at  the  age  of  eight.  Concerning  this  he 
wrote  at  twenty-five  :  "  How  the  deuce  did  all  this  occur  so  early  ? 
Where  could  it  originate?  I  certainly  had  no  sexual  ideas  for 
years  afterwards ;  and  yet  my  misery,  my  love  for  that  girl  [Mary 
Duff]  were  so  violent  that  I  sometimes  wonder  if  I  have  ever  been 


GENIUS  IN  LOVE  205 

really  attached  since.'  Of  his  second  Love-affair  Byron  says  : 
"My  first  dash  into  poetry  was  as  early  as  1800.  It  was  the 
ebullition  of  a  passion  for  my  first  cousin,  Margaret  Parker,  one  of 
the  mo&t  beautiful  of  evanescent  beings.  I  have  long  forgotten 
the  verses,  but  it  would  be  difficult  for  me  to  forget  her — her  dark 
eyes  [Byron  had  a  passion  for  black  eyes] — her  long  eyelashes — 
her  completely  Greek  cast  of  face  and  figure.  I  was  then  about 
twelve — she  rather  older,  perhaps  a  year.  She  died  about  a  year 
or  two  afterwards." 

Burns  was  somewhat  older  when  Love  and  poetry  were  born  in 
his  soul  simultaneously :  "  You  know  our  country  custom,"  he 
writes,  "  of  coupling  a  man  and  woman  together  as  partners  in 
the  labours  of  the  harvest.  In  my  fifteenth  summer  my  partner 
was  a  bewitching  creature,  a  year  younger  than  myself.  Mv 
scarcity  of  English  denies  me  the  power  of  doing  her  justice  in 
that  language,  but  you  know  the  Scottish  idiom.  She  was  a 
bonnie,  sweet,  sonsie  lass.  In  short,  she,  altogether  unwittingly 
to  herself,  initiated  me  in  that  delicious  passion,  which,  in  spite  of 
acid  disappointment,  gin-horse  prudence,  and  bookworm  philosophy, 
I  hold  to  be  the  first  of  human  joys  here  below." 

Heine's  first  boyish  love  appears  to  have  been  a  girl  who  died 
as  a  child,  and  is  alluded  to  in  his  Pictures  of  Travel  as  the 
"  little  Veronica."  His  second  love  was  a  most  extraordinary  case 
of  Love  at  Sight.  It  was  at  a  school  examination,  Kobert  Proelsz 
relates,  "  and  Harry  was  just  declaiming  Schiller's  Taucher,  when 
the  lovely  girl  entered  the  room  by  the  side  of  her  father,  who 
was  one  of  the  inspectors.  The  boy  stuttered,  gazed  with-  large 
eyes  on  the  beautiful  figure,  mechanically  repeated  the  verse  he 
had  just  recited — *  And  the  King  his  lovely  daughter  beckoned' — 
and  was  unable  to  proceed.  In  vain  the  teacher  prompted  him, 
the  poor  fellow's  senses  failed  him,  and  he  fell  on  the  floor  in  a 
swoon." 

Of  another  early  visitation  of  sudden  Love  he  gives  an  account 
in  his  posthumous  memoirs.  The  girl  on  this  occasion  was  the 
red-haired  Sefchen,  the  sheriffs  daughter,  who,  when  she  was  only 
eight  years  old,  had  witnessed  the  mysterious  burial  of  her  grand- 
father's sword,  which  had  done  its  duty  a  hundred  times,  and 
which  some  years  later  her  aunt  had  dug  out  and  secreted  in  the 
garret  "  One  day,  when  we  were  alone,  I  begged  Sefchen  to 
show  me  that  curiosity.  She  willingly  complied,  went  into  the 
room,  and  soon  came  out  with  an  enormous  sword,  which  she 
swung  vigorously  despite  her  weak  arms,  while  with  a  roguish, 
threatening  tone  she  sang — 


206  BOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

"  'Will  you  kiss  the  naked  sword 
Which  the  Lord  has  given  us  ?  * 

I  replied  in  the  same  tone,  *  I  will  not  kiss  the  naked  sword,  I  will 
kiss  the  red-haired  Sefchen ; '  and  as  she  could  not  defend  herself, 
for  fear  of  hurting  me  with  the  fatal  steel,  she  had  to  let  me  boldly 
put  my  arms  round  her  slender  waist  and  kiss  her  defiant  lips." 

Berlioz  had  his  first  passion  at  twelve,  Rousseau  at  eleven. 
"When  I  saw  Mile.  Goton,"  writes  Rousseau,  "I  could  see 
nothing  else,  all  my  senses  were  in  confusion.  ...  In  her  presence 
I  was  agitated,  and  trembled.  ...  If  Mile.  Goton  had  ordered 
me  to  throw  myself  into  the  fire,  I  believe  I  would  have  obeyed 
her  instantly." 

As  old  age  is  in  many  respects  a  second  childhood,  it  seems 
natural  that  men  of  genius  should  appear  "precocious"  in  this 
belated  sense  too.  The  case  of  Berlioz  is  one  of  the  most  extra- 
ordinary on  record.  The  girl  who  was  his  first  love  at  twelve  he 
eaw  again  at  sixty-one  :  "  I  recognised  the  divine  stateliness  of  her 
step ;  but,  oh  heavens !  how  changed  she  was !  her  complexion 
faded,  her  hair  gray.  And  yet  at  the  sight  of  her  my  heart  did 
not  feel  one  moment's  indecision ;  my  whole  soul  went  out  to  its 
idol,  as  though  she  were  still  in  her  dazzling  loveliness.  .  .  . 
Balzac,  nay,  Shakspere  himself,  the  great  painter  of  the  passions, 
never  dreamt  of  such  a  thing."  And  in  a  letter  to  her  he  writes, 
"  I  have  loved  you,  I  still  love  you,  I  shall  always  love  you.  And 
yet  I  am  sixty-one  years  of  age.  ...  Oh,  madame,  madame,  I 
have  but  one  aim  left  in  the  world — that  of  obtaining  your 
affection." 

Another  composer  who  had  a  passion  at  sixty  was  "  Papa " 
Haydn — poor  Haydn,  whose  wife  led  him  such  a  terrible  life,  and 
used  his  manuscripts  for  curl-papers.  Concerning  her  he  wrote, 
"  She  is  always  in  a  bad  temper,  and  does  not  care  whether  I  am 
a  shoemaker  or  an  artist."  Indeed,  she  had  never  been  his  true 
Love,  but  was  only  taken  in  lieu  of  her  younger  sister,  whom 
Haydn  adored,  but  who  refused  him  and  became  a  nun.  At  sixty, 
however,  in  London,  he  had  the  fortune,  or  misfortune,  to  fall  in 
Love  again,  with  a  widow  named  Schrolter,  concerning  whom  he 
wrote,  "She  was  a  very  attractive  woman,  and  still  handsome, 
though  over  sixty ;  and  had  I  been  free  I  should  certainly  have 
married  her." 

Goethe,  in  his  old  days,  fell  in  Love  with  Minna  Herzlieb,  a 
bookseller's  daughter.  "  In  the  sonnets  addressed  to  her,"  says 
Lewes,  "  and  in  the  novel  of  Elective  Affinities,  may  be  read  the 
fervour  of  his  passion,  and  the  strength  with  which  he  resisted.1' 


GENIUS  IN  LOVE  207 

Rousseau's  last  Love  forms  one  of  the  most  romantic  episodes 
in  his  life,  concerning  which  nothing  was  known  until  a  few  years 
ago  when  the  French  historian,  R.  Chantslauze,  discovered  in  a 
bookstall  the  MS.  of  a  letter  by  Kousseau  to  Lady  Ceclle  Hobart, 
dated  1770,  when  Rousseau  was  almost  sixty  years  of  age.  He 
appears  to  have  met  this  lady  in  England  at  the  time  when  he  was 
writing  his  Confessions.  She  had  first  won  his  affection  by  her 
admiration  of  his  works ;  and  in  course  of  his  long  and  hyper- 
sentimental  letter  he  remarks,  "  Why  is  it  that  I  have  never  felt 
any  other  true  love  but  that  for  the  products  of  my  own  fancy  1 
Wherein  lies  the  reason,  Cecile  1  In  these  fancied  beings  them- 
selves ;  they  made  me  dissatisfied  with  everything  else.  For  forty 
years  I  have  carried  in  my  mind  the  image  of  her  I  adore.  I  love 
her  with  a  constancy,  an  ecstasy  inexpressible.  ...  I  had  no 
hope  of  ever  meeting  her,  had  given  up  the  eager  search  for  her, 
when  you  appeared  before  me.  It  was  folly,  infatuation,  if  you 
like,  that  made  me  surrender  myself  for  a  moment  to  the  magic  of 
your  sight ;  but  I  could  not  but  say  to  myself :  There  she  is ! 
No  other  woman  ever  inspired  that  thought  in  me.  And  stranger 
still  is  it  that  I  could  hear  you  speak  without  changing  my  opinion. 
What  the  ideal  of  iny  heart  thought,  you  spoke  it  to  my  ears." 

n.— ARDOUB 

If  Bacon  did  not  write  the  plays  of  Shakspere,  it  was  the 
biggest  mistake  of  his  life.  Second  among  his  mistakes  must 
rank  the  opinion  expressed  in  the  following  sentence  :  "  You  may 
observe  that  amongst  all  the  great  and  worthy  persons  (whereof 
the  memory  remaineth,  either  ancient  or  modern),  there  is  not  one 
that  hath  been  transported  to  the  mad  degree  of  love." 

If  the  advocates  of  the  Baconian  theory  had  as  much  sense  of 
humour  as  they  stimulate  in  other  people,  they  would  see  that 
such  a  sentence — and  there  are  others  like  it  in  Bacon — could  not 
by  any  possibility  have  been  penned  by  the  author  of  As  You  Like 
It,  Venus  and  Adonis^  or  Romeo  and  Juliet. 

Dante  was  by  no  means  the  only  "  great  and  worthy  person  " 
before  Bacon's  day  who  had  been  "  transported  to  the  mad  degree 
of  love";  and  since  Bacon's  day  the  word  Genius  has  become 
almost  synonymous  with  the  capacity  for  lovers'  madness. 

Yet  there  is  a  grain  of  truth  in  Bacon's  sentence  as  it  stands. 
He  evidently  had  in  mind  chiefly  the  ancient  "great  and  worthy 
persons  " ;  and  of  these,  as  we  have  seen,  but  one  or  two  had  even 
a  vague  presentiment  of  what  was  to  be  some  day  the  moral  lever 


208  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

of  the  universe.  Bacon  probably  had  a  dim  perception  of  the  fact 
that  the  ancients  knew  nothing  of  passionate  Love,  of  the  imagina- 
tive type ;  but  he  did  not  quite  succeed  in  grasping  the  idea. 

As  regards  Modern  Genius,  Bacon's  assertion  is  so  far  from  the 
truth,  that  it  is  quite  safe  to  reverse  it  and  say  that  it  is  doubtful 
whether  any  one  but  a  man  of  genius  is  capable  of  that  intense 
ardour  of  feeling  which  marks  the  climax  of  Love ;  doubtful 
whether  even  Romeo  at  his  age  could  have  felt  a  passion  such  as 
Shakspere's  glowing  imagination  painted.  Love  is  based,  not  on 
what  a  man  sees  with  his  eyes,  but  on  the  mental  image  retouched 
by  the  imagination  \  and  a  man  of  genius,  being  a  virtuoso  of  the 
imagination,  can  adorn  his  ideal  of  love  with  ornaments  unknown 
to  ordinary  mortals ;  whence  it  follows  that  the  passion  inspired 
by  his  more  vivid  and  beautiful  image  must  be  more  intense  than 
the  passion  inspired  by  less  perfect  visions  in  common,  sluggish 
brains.  And  since  artistic  thought  can  no  more  crystallise  into 
verse  or  epigram  without  the  warm  glow  of  emotion  than  a  flower 
can  grow  into  a  thing  of  beauty  without  its  daily  bath  of  warm 
sunshine,  it  is  fortunate  that  Genius  implies  a  natural  suscepti- 
bility to  the  aesthetic  passion  of  Love. 

Fortunate  also  for  the  prospects  of  Romantic  Love  is  the  fact 
that  Genius  is  king  in  its  realms.  Had  not  the  sacred  mysteries 
of  Love  been  revealed  to  the  world  in  the  glowing  language  of 
poetry,  it  would  probably  have  remained  a  thing  unknown  to 
ordinary  mortals  for  centuries  to  come ;  even  as  the  beauties  of 
Nature,  for  which  common  minds  have  no  eyes,  would  have 
remained  undetected,  had  not  the  poets  and  artists  disclosed  the 
bonds  that  connect  them  with  human  sympathies. 

As  all  the  quotations  from  poets  given  in  this  chapter  (and  in 
that  on  Hyperbole)  practically  bear  witness  to  the  exceptional 
ardour  of  Love  in  men  of  genius,  only  two  cases  need  be  cited  as 
specimens — those  of  Burns  and  Heine.  Gilbert  Burns,  the  brother 
of  the  poet,  writes  that  the  latter  "  was  constantly  the  victim  of 
some  fair  enslaver.  The  symptoms  of  his  passion  were  often  such 
as  nearly  to  equal  those  of  the  celebrated  Sappho.  I  never, 
indeed,  knew  that  he  '  fainted,  sunk,  and  died  away ' ;  but  the 
agitations  of  his  mind  and  body  exceeded  anything  of  the  kind  I 
ever  knew  in  real  life." 

Heine  has  given  evidence  in  his  letters  as  well  as  his  poems 
that  few  even  of  his  equals  have  ever  felt  the  power  of  love  so 
profoundly.  It  is  well  to  emphasise  this  fact ;  for  there  are  not  a 
few  who  fancy  that,  like  Petrarch,  Heine  embodied  in  his  songs 
not  the  real  feelings  of  his  heart  but  fictitious  emotions  depicted 


GENIUS  IN  LOVE  209 

to  gratify  poetic  ambition.  He  did  no  such  thing.  His  Love- 
poetry  is  the  echo  of  real  passion,  of  his  first  and  only  true  Love, 
which  cast  a  shadow  over  his  whole  life,  and  goaded  him  into 
bitter  reflections  more  than  a  decade  after  its  sad  ending.  He 
loved  his  cousin  Molly,  and  writes  to  a  friend,  after  an  absence 
from  home  :  "  Rejoice  with  me  !  rejoice  with  me  !  in  four  weeks  I 
shall  see  Molly.  With  her  my  muse  will  also  return."  The 
muse  did  return,  but  in  a  different  way  from  that  which  he  had 
anticipated ;  with  a  smile  in  her  face  of  cynicism,  mockery, 
melancholy,  which  never  again  left  her.  "  She  loves  me  not !  "  he 
writes,  in  1816.  "Softly,  dear  Christian,  pronounce  that  last 
word  softly.  In  the  first  words  lies  the  eternal  living  heaven,  but 
in  the  last  lies  eternal  living  hell.  If  you  could  only  see  your 
friend's  countenance,  how  pale  he  looks,  how  bewildered,  how 
insane,  your  righteous  indignation  at  my  long  silence  would  vanish 
soon ;  better  still  were  it  if  you  could  have  one  glance  at  my  soul — 
then  would  you  really  learn  to  love  me."  "  I  have  seen  her  again — 

"  '  The  devil  take  my  soul, 
My  body  be  the  sheriff's, 
Yet  I  for  me  alone 
Select  the  loveliest  woman.' 

Hui  1  do  you  not  shudder,  Christian  'I  Well  may  you  shudder 
even  as  I  do.  Burn  the  letter,  the  Lord  have  mercy  on  my  soul. 
I  did  not  write  these  words.  There  on  my  chair  sits  a  pale  man ; 
he  wrote  them.  And  this  because  it  is  midnight.  Oh  heavens  ! 
Madness  cannot  sin  ! " 

"There,  there,  do  not  breathe  so  heavily,  there  I  have  just 
built  a  lovely  card-house,  and  on  the  top  of  it  I  stand  and  hold 
her  in  my  arms !  .  .  .  But  indeed  you  can  hardly  fancy,  dear 
Christian,  how  delightful,  how  lovely  my  ruin  appears.  Far  from 
her,  to  carry  burning  desires  in  my  heart  for  years,  is  torture 
infernal ;  but  to  be  near  her  and  yet  oft  sigh  in  vain,  whole  end- 
less weeks,  for  my  only  delight,  the  sight  of  her  and — and — 0  ! 
0  !  0  !  Christian  !  that  is  enough  to  make  the  purest,  most  pious 
soul  flare  up  in  wild,  delirious  ungodliness ! " 

And  the  object  of  this  passion,  who  might  have  saved  a  poet's 
soul  and  changed  him  from  a  negative  ferment  into  a  positive 
agent  of  culture  ?  She  was  the  daughter  of  a  millionaire,  who,  of 
course,  in  German  fashion,  had  to  marry  into  another  rich  family. 
To  marry  a  poor  poet  would  have  been  deemed  a  terrible  mesalli- 
ance. Yet  was  he  not  a  millionaire  too — of  ideas,  as  she  was  in 
beauty,  her  father  in  money  1  But  that  is  reasoning  a  la  Millen- 
nium. 


210  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

"What  a  comedy  it  will  be  to  future  generations,  entirely 
emancipated  from  mediaeval  puerilities,  to  read  that  two  such 
Kings  in  the  realm  of  Genius  as  Schubert  and  Beethoven,  could 
not  marry  their  true  loves  on  account  of  differences  in  social 
position — rank  and  money  ! 

We  are  accustomed  to  look  down  on  China  and  Chinese  culture. 
But  China  anticipated  Europe  by  several  centuries  in  the  discovery 
of  gunpowder ;  and  there  is  another  thing  in  which  that  country 
is  centuries  ahead  of  Europe.  "  In  China  there  is  no  aristocracy 
of  birth  or  money.  The  aristocracy  which  here  ranks  socially 
above  the  other  classes  is  solely  and  only  that  of  the  Intellect." 

III. — FICKLENESS 

Love  is  a  tissue  of  paradoxes.  The  very  ardour  of  their 
passion  inclines  men  of  genius  to  fickleness.  "  Love  me  little  love 
me  long  "  is  a  short  way  of  saying  that  whereas  a  blazing,  roaring 
fire  consumes  itself  in  an  hour,  the  quiet,  glowing  coals  covered 
with  ashes  will  outlast  the  night. 

Lamartine's  "  heureuse  la  beauts'  que  le  poete  adore  " — happy 
the  beauty  whom  the  poet  adores — may  be  endorsed  by  a  maiden 
who  is  willing  to  become  the  secondary  wife  of  a  poetic  polygamist 
already  wedded  to  a  muse,  for  the  sake  of  having  it  said  in  his 
biography  that  she  inspired  him  with  some  of  his  prettiest  con- 
ceits— 

"Cynthia,  facundi  carmen  juvenile  Properti, 
Accepit  famam  nee  minus  ilia  dedit," 

as  Martial  says  of  a  Roman  beauty.  Others  will  hesitate  on 
reading  the  following,  from  London  Society : — 

"  Lord  Byron  has  said  that  nothing  can  inflict  greater  torture 
upon  a  woman  than  the  mere  fact  of  loving  a  poet ;  and  though 
Lamartine  calls  it  a  glory  to  be  the  object  of  immortal  songs,  we 
half-suspect  that  the  English  bard  is  right,  and  that  it  would  be 
impossible  to  describe  the  moral  sufferings  of  those  frail  beings 
who  seem  to  be  the  mere  toys  of  an  houi'.  The  world  may  be 
indebted  to  them  for  some  great  poem  which  their  love  has  had 
the  power  to  inspire,  but  they  themselves  were  probably  no  more 
thought  of  by  the  poet  than  the  daisy  he  might  tread  on  as  he 
passed  by." 

Here  is  a  case  in  point:  " Swift,"  says  Byron,  "when  neither 
young  nor  handsome,  nor  rich  nor  even  amiable,  inspired  two  of 
the  most  extraordinary  passions  on  record — Vanessa's  and  Stella's. 
...  He  requited  them  bitterly,  for  he  seems  to  have  broken  the 


GENIUS  IN  LOVE  211 

heart  of  the  one  and  worn  out  that  of  the  other ;  and  he  had  his 
reward,  for  he  died  a  solitary  idiot  in  the  hands  of  servants." 

It  would  be  unjust,  however,  in  all  cases  to  trace  poetic  fickle- 
ness to  heartless  or  deliberate  cruelty.  May  not  the  poet  and  the 
artist  be  regarded  as  martyrs  to  art  and  science — students  of 
beauty,  obliged  to  take  a  purely  aesthetic,  disinterested  interest  in 
feminine  charms — as  they  do  in  a  picture  or  a  land-cnpe — without 
any  desire  of  exclusive  possession  ]  They  flirt,  apparently,  not  to 
break  hearts,  but  merely  to  educate  their  sense  of  beauty.  For  is 
not  a  woman's  face  the  compendium  of  all  beauty  in  the  world  1 
and  a  woman's  eyes,  expressing  incipient  Love,  are  they  not  so 
exquisitely  beautiful  that  an  epicure  of  Love  could  for  ever  be 
contented  with  that  expression  alone,  feeling  that  marriage,  which 
might  alter  it,  if  ever  so  little,  would  be  a  betise  ?  Perhaps  some 
similar  thought  was  in  Heine's  mind  when  he  wrote  his  famous 

"  Du  hist  wie  eine  Blume 
So  hold  und  schon  und  rein  ; 
Ich  schau'  dich  an,  und  Wehmuth 
Schleicht  mir  ins  Herz  Mnein. 

"Mir  ist,  als  ob  ich  die  Hande 
Aufs  Haupt  dir  legen  sollt', 
Betend,  dass  Gott  dich  erhalte 
So  rein  und  schou  und  hold." 

In  quite  a  different  kind  of  a  poem  Heine  bluntly  announces  to 
his  "  Queen  Mary  IV."  his  declaration  of  independence,  and 
informs  her  that  not  a  few  who  ruled  before  her  have  been 
unceremoniously  deposed — 

"  Manche  die  vor  dir  regierte 
Wurde  schmahlich  abgesetzt." 

And  in  his  narrative  of  the  sheriff's  daughter  he  says,  "  I  shall  not 
describe  my  love  for  Josepha  in  detail.  This,  however,  I  will  con- 
fess, that  it  was  after  all  only  a  prelude  to  the  great  tragedies  of 
my  riper  years.  Thus  does  Romeo  become  infatuated  with  Rosa- 
line before  he  finds  his  Juliet." 

Byron's  confession,  in  speaking  of  an  early  love,  that  he  had 
been  "attached  fifty  times  since"  has  been  referred  to  already; 
and  although  Byron  loved  to  exaggerate  his  foibles,  his  record  in 
this  case  does  not  belie  his  words.  Of  ^urns,  Principal  Shairp 
writes  that  "  There  was  not  a  comely  girl  in  Tarbolton  on  whom 
he  did  not  compose  a  song,  and  then  he  made  one  which  included 
them  all."  Burns  himself  confesses,  "  In  my  conscience,  I  believe 
that  my  heart  has  been  so  often  on  fire  that  it  has  been  vitrified." 


212  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

And  Washington  Irving  remarks  on  Goldsmith's  first  love  as  "  a 
passion  of  that  transient  kind  which  grows  up  in  idleness  and 
exhales  itself  in  poetry." 

Of  this  kind  were  two  passions  of  Lamb,  concerning  which  a 
biographer  says,  "A  youthful  passion,  which  lasted  only  a  few 
months,  and  which  he  afterwards  attempted  to  regard  lightly  as  a 
folly  past,  inspired  a  few  sonnets  of  very  delicate  feeling  and 
exquisite  music."  And  of  his  second  flame,  "  His  stay  at  Penton- 
ville  is  remarkable  for  the  fugitive  passion  conceived  by  Lamb  for 
a  young  Quakeress  named  Hester  Savory,  which  he  has  enshrined 
and  immortalised  in  the  little  poem  of  Hester" 

Goethe  has  the  reputation  of  having  been  of  all  famous  lovers 
the  most  fickle.  Like  Byron,  Goethe  appears  to  have  endeavoured 
to  make  himself  appear  more  frivolous  than  he  was.  His  amorous 
Roman  Elegies,  which  have  given  so  much  offence,  were  in  reality 
written  in  Thuringia,  after  his  return  from  Italy;  and  their  heroine 
was  no  one  but  the  girl  who  subsequently  became  his  wife. 

It  remained  for  a  Scotchman  to  write  the  best  apology  for 
Goethe's  love-affairs.  "  To  Goethe,"  says  Professor  Blackie,  "  the 
sight  of  any  beautiful  object  was  like  delicate  music  to  the  ear  of 
a  cunning  musician ;  he  was  carried  away  by  it,  and  floated  in  its 
element  joyously,  as  a  swallow  in  the  summer  air.,  or  a  sea-mew  on 
the  buoyant  wave.  Hence  the  rich  story  of  Goethe's  loves,  with 
which  scandal,  of  course,  and  prudery  have  made  their  market, 
but  which,  when  looked  into  carefully,  were  just  as  much  part  of 
his  genius  as  Faust  or  Iphigenia — a  part,  indeed,  without  which 
neither  Faust  nor  Iphigenia  could  have  been  written.  .  .  .  Let  no 
one,  therefore,  take  offence  when  I  say  that  Goethe  was  always 
falling  in  love,  and  that  I  consider  this  a  great  virtue  in  his 
character." 

One  more  case :  "  Beethoven  constantly  had  his  love-affairs," 
says  Wegeler.  His  first  love  was  a  Cologne  beauty,  who  coquetted 
with  him  and  another  man  till  both  discovered  she  was  engaged 
to  a  third!  Several  times  Beethoven  made  up  his  mind  to  marry; 
he  made  two  definite  proposals,  both  of  which  were  refused.  One 
fatal  objection  was  his  habit  of  falling  in  love  with  women  above 
him  in  "  rank."  "  It  is  a  frightful  thing,"  he  once  wrote,  "  to 
make  the  acquaintance  of  such  a  sweet  creature  and  to  lose  her 
immediately;  and  nothing  is  more  insupportable  than  thus  to  have 
to  confess  one's  own  foolishness."  One  of  his  flames,  an  opera 
einger,  gave  as  a  reason  why  she  refused  him  that  he  was  "  so  ugly 
and  half-cracked!" 


GENIUS  IN  LOVE 
IV. — MULTIPLICITY 

Perhaps  the  most  unique  trait  in  the  love  of  men  of  genius  is 
the  apparent  occasional  absence  of  the  element  of  Monopoly.  It 
was  Ovid  who  first  discussed  the  question  whether  a  man  could 
love  two  women  at  once.  His  friend  Gracinus  denied  the  possi- 
bility of  such  a  thing ;  but  in  one  of  his  Elegies  Ovid  refutes  him 
by  citing  his  own  case  of  a  double  simultaneous  infatuation.  He 
hesitates  which  of  the  two  to  choose,  chides  Venus  for  torturing 
him  with  double  love — for  adding  leaves  to  the  trees,  stars  to  the 
heavens,  water  to  the  ocean. 

Of  modern  authors  not  a  few  appear  to  have  followed  in 
Ovid's  footsteps.  We  have  seen  how  madly  Heine  was  in  love 
for  a  long  time  with  his  cousin  Amalie.  Yet,  as  one  of  his  bio- 
graphers, Robert  Proelsz,  remarks,  this  ardent  though  hopeless 
infatuation  saved  him  neither  at  Hamburg  nor  at  Bonn,  nor  at 
Hanover  or  Berlin,  from  a  number  of  love-affairs,  some  of  which 
are  vaguely  commemorated  in  his  writings.  Another  German 
poet,  Wieland,  after  various  romantic  adventures,  fell  in  love  with 
Julia  Bondeli,  a  pupil  of  Rousseau's,  and  asked  for  her  heart  and 
hand ;  but  she  mistrusted  him,  and  asked  the  pertinent  question, 
"Tell  me,  will  you  never  be  able  to  love  another  besides  me?" 
"Never!"  he  replied,  "that  is  impossible.  .  .  .  Yet  it  might  be 
possible  for  a  moment,  if  I  should  chance  to  see  a  more  beautiful 
woman  than  you  who  is  at  the  same  time  very  unhappy  and  very 
virtuous."  "  Poor  Wieland,"  Scherr  continues,  "  who  subsequently 
understood  the  anatomy  of  the  female  heart  so  well,  appears  not 
to  have  known  then  that  no  woman  pardons  in  her  lover  the 
thought  that  he  might  find  another  more  beautiful  than  her.  Julia 
knew  what  she  had  to  do,  and  with  deeply-wounded  heart  allowed 
the  poet  to  depart." 

Of  Burns  his  brother  Gilbert  says,  "  When  he  selected  any  one 
out  of  the  sovereignty  of  his  good  pleasure,  to  whom  he  should  pay 
his  particular  attention,  she  was  instantly  invested  with  a  sufficient 
stock  of  charms  out  of  the  plentiful  stores  of  his  own  imagination  ; 
and  there  was  often  a  great  disparity  between  his  fair  captivator 
and  her  attributes.  One  generally  reigned  paramount  in  his 
affections ;  but  as  Yorick's  affections  flowed  out  toward  Madame 

de  L at  the  remise  door,  while  the  eternal  vows  of  Eliza 

were  upon  him,  so  Robert  was  frequently  encountering  other 
attractions,  which  formed  so  many  under-plots  in  the  drama  of 
his  love." 

In  Goethe's  life  these  "  under-plots "  played  a  like  prominent 


214  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

part.  "  He  always  needed  a  number  of  feminine  hearts  of  more  or 
less  personal  interest,  in  which  to  mirror  himself,"  we  read ;  and 
he  himself  told  his  Charlotte  (in  1777)  that  her  love  was  "the 
thread  by  which  all  his  other  little  passions,  pastimes,  and  flirta- 
tions hung." 

So  that,  after  all,  it  seems  possible  to  love  two  at  a  time ;  but 
it  takes  genius  to  do  it  / 

Yet  even  with  men  of  genius  it  is  only  possible  in  ordinary 
love-affairs.  A  supreme  love-affair  allows  but  one  goddess  under 
any  circumstances. 

Schumann  was  one  of  the  most  multitudinous  lovers  on  record. 
Apparently  his  first  love  was  Nanni,  his  "  guardian  angel,"  who 
saved  him  from  the  perils  of  the  world,  and  hovered  before  his 
vision  like  a  saint.  "  I  feel  that  I  could  kneel  before  her  and 
adore  her  like  a  Madonna,"  he  says  in  a  letter.  But  Nanni  had  a 
dangerous  rival  in  Liddy.  Not  long,  however,  for  he  found  Liddy 
silly,  cold  as  marble,  and — fatal  defect !  she  could  not  sympathise 
with  him  regarding  Jean  Paul.  "  The  exalted  image  of  my  ideal 
disappears  when  I  think  of  the  remarks  she  made  about  Jean 
Paul.  Let  the  dead  rest  in  peace."  Curiously  enough,  there  are 
references  to  both  these  girls  at  various  dates,  showing  that,  like 
Ovid,  he  vacillated  between  the  two.  He  had  a  number  of  other 
flames,  and  after  his  engagement  to  Clara  Wieck  gave  her  warning 
that  he  had  the  "  very  mischievous  habit "  of  being  a  great  ad- 
mirer of  lovely  women.  "  They  make  me  positively  smirk,  and  I 
swim  in  panegyrics  on  your  sex.  Consequently,  if  at  some  future 
time  we  walk  along  the  streets  of  Vienna  and  meet  a  beauty,  and 
1  exclaim,  '  Oh  Clara !  see  this  heavenly  vision  !'  or  something  of 
the  sort,  you  must  not  be  alarmed  nor  scold  me." 

But  the  most  enterprising  lover  ever  known  to  the  world  was 
Alfieri ;  for  his  first  Love  seems  to  have  embraced  a  whole  female 
seminary/  In  his  Memoir es,  at  any  rate,  he  uses  the  plural  in 
speaking  of  the  object  of  his  first  passion.  He  was  indeed  only 
nine  years  old,  which  may  excuse  this  amorous  anomaly.  He  had 
seen  in  church  a  number  of  young  novices,  and  thus  describes  his 
feelings  (the  italics  are  mine) :  "  My  innocent  attraction  towards 
these  novices  became  so  strong  that  I  thought  of  them  and  their 
doings  incessantly.  At  one  moment  my  imagination  painted  them 
holding  their  candles  in  their  hands,  serving  mass  with  an  air  of 
angelic  submission,  and  again  raising  the  smoke  of  incense  at  the 
foot  of  the  altar;  and,  entirely  absorbed  in  these  images,  I 
neglected  my  studies;  every  occupation  and  all  companionship 
bored  me." 


GENIUS  IN  LOVE  215 

V. — FICTITIOUSNESS 

If  Shakspere  could  identify  woman  with  frailty,  one  might  with 
equal  propriety  exclaim,  Vanity,  thy  name  is  man !  Clever  men 
have  a  habit  of  paying  pretty  girls  neat  compliments,  less  to  please 
the  girls  than  to  show  off  their  wit.  And  clever  women,  though 
they  may  not  accept  these  remarks  literally,  still  have  cause  to  be 
gratified  with  them,  in  proportion  to  the  excellence  of  the  wit ;  for 
ugliness  or  inferior  beauty  never  inspires  a  happy  thought  in  a 
clever  man. 

Poets  represent  the  climax  of  masculine  vanity.  Though  their 
first  Love-poems  may  be  the  embodiment  of  real  passion,  in  subse- 
quent efforts  the  purely  literary  origin  is  too  often  apparent.  Since 
poetic  composition  is  in  itself  a  mingled  agony  and  delight,  very 
like  Love  itself,  nothing  so  facilitates  its  progress  as  exciting  Love- 
memories.  Hence  poets  are  for  ever  urged  on  to  compose  Love 
ditties  in  which  they  endeavour  to  out -Romeo  Romeo,  to  out- 
hyperbolise  one  another,  as  women  try  to  out-dress  one  another. 
This  is  one  aspect  of  their  vanity;  the  other  lies  in  their  desire 
for  sympathetic  admiration.  So,  whenever  a  poet  meets  a  damsel 
who  comes  within  half  a  mile  of  his  ideal,  he  forthwith  unfolds 
before  her  eyes  his  gaudy  dithyrambs  and  sonnets,  and  indulges 
in  various  Love-antics,  very  much  like  an  infatuated  peacock. 

Even  the  great  Dante  is  not  free  from  the  reproach  of  having 
used  his  true  love  for  mere  literary  purposes.  Beatrice  became  to 
him  gradually  an  abstraction,  an  allegory,  a  name  for  woman  in 
general.  But  it  is  in  his  countryman  Petrarch  that  the  tendency 
to  use  a  sweetheart  for  purely  ornamental  purposes,  as  if  she  were 
a  feather  to  be  stuck  in  one's  hat,  is  most  vividly  illustrated. 
Petrarch  is  a  conspicuous  illustration  of  the  fact  that  a  poetic 
reputation  once  established  will  live  on  for  ever,  for  the  simpk 
reason  that  very  few  people  ever  take  the  trouble  to  read  and 
judge  for  themselves;  so  that  an  undeserved  reputation,  like  a 
disease,  is  inherited  by  generation  after  generation. 

No  one,  of  course,  can  question  Petrarch's  learning  and  his 
influence  on  the  progress  of  modern  culture.  I  speak  of  him  only 
as  a  love-poet ;  and  as  such  he  occupies  a  wofully  low  rank.  I 
have  read  and  reread  his  sonnets,  and  have  found  them  one  of  the 
dreariest  deserts  the  quest  for  information  has  ever  driven  me  into. 
To  say  with  Mr.  Symonds,  in  the  Encyclopedia  J3ritannica,  that 
{  he  was  far  from  approaching  the  analysis  of  emotion  with  the 
directness  of  a  Heine  or  De  Musset,"  is  putting  it  very  mildly  in- 
deed. Professor  Schcrr  points  out  his  lack  of  poetic  imagination 


210  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

iii  these  words :  "  Though  he  took  so  much  trouble  to  hand  down 
the  beauty  of  his  Laura  to  posterity,  yet  (he)  never  gets  beyond 
a  tedious  enumeration  of  her  charms.  Petrarch  never  gives  us  a 
clear  portrait  of  his  lady."  "  The  poems  of  her  lover,"  says  Mr. 
Symonds,  "  demonstrate  that  she  was  a  married  woman,  with 
whom  he  enjoyed  a  respectful  and  not  very  intimate  friendship." 
Moore  refers  to  Petrarch  as  one  "  who  would  not  suffer  his  only 
daughter  to  reside  beneath  his  roof,  [but]  expended  thirty -two 
years  of  poetry  and  passion  on  an  idealised  love."  Schopenhauer 
naively  accepted  the  reality  of  Petrarch's  passion,  which  the  poor 
fellow  had  to  drag  through  life  "  like  a  prisoner's  chain,"  because 
the  case  suited  his  argument ;  but  Mr.  Macaulay  more  justly  re- 
marks that  "  to  readers  of  our  time,  the  love  of  Petrarch  seems  to 
have  been  of  that  kind  which  breaks  no  hearts."  Finally  Professor 
Scherr's  opinion  may  be  cited,  which  agrees  with  the  view  here  taken. 

In  1327  Petrarch  "made  the  acquaintance  of  Laura,  the  wife 
of  Hugo  de  Sade,  who  has  become  famous  through  him,  and  whom 
during  twenty-one  years  he  continued  to  love,  or  at  least  to  cele- 
brate in  song;  for  one  feels  somewhat  uncertain  regarding  this 
love,  and  is  very  much  tempted  to  regard  it  more  as  a  matter  of 
the  head  than  of  the  heart  and  the  senses — more  as  a  welcome 
theme  for  his  troubadour  art  and  Provencal  amorous  subtlety  than 
as  a  genuine,  true  passion.  Petrarch's  qualities  in  general,  both 
as  a  man  and  as  a  poet,  are  tainted  by  an  appearance  of  hollowness, 
a  want  of  substance  and  character.  He  lacked  genuine  originality, 
the  power  of  spontaneous  creation." 

Petrarch,  it  is  true,  was  an  extreme  case  of  the  poet's  inclination 
to  give  Love  a  fictitious  permanence  and  depth  ;  and  he  lived,  more- 
over, at  a  time  when  the  novelty  of  the  spiritual  aspect  of  Love 
naturally  inclined  the  mind  to  exaggeration  in  that  direction.  In 
the  case  of  modern  poets,  much  less  allowance  has  to  be  commonly 
made  for  motives  of  purely  poetic  or  literary  origin. 

Such  being  the  leading  characteristics  of  Love  in  men  of  genius, 
and  such  men  being  emotionally  a  few  centuries  ahead  of  others, 
the  questions  arise,  "Is  it  likely  that  the  Love  of  ordinary  mortals 
will  gradually  assume  those  traits'?  and  is  it  desirable  that  it  should  ?" 

There  seems  no  immediate  danger  that  the  world  will  be 
peopled  largely  by  geniuses,  though  there  is  a  rapid  and  steady 
advance  in  culture,  which  in  a  thousand  years  may  greatly  lessen 
the  difference  between  men  of  genius  and  average  men  of  the  future 
as  compared  with  those  of  to-day.  When  that  millennium  arrives 
the  man  of  genius  may  have  advanced  another  step,  but  not  so 
great,  perhaps,  as  that  which  now  raises  him  above  the  common 


GENIUS  IN  LOVE  217 

herd.  He  will  not  then  be  so  great  an  anomaly,  and  will  find 
society  less  willing  than  in  the  past  to  make  allowance  for  his 
irregularities,  such  as  his  fickleness  and  multiplicity  of  Love-affairs. 

Yet,  after  all,  these  great  men  are  only  partly  to  blame  for 
their  fickleness.  Beethoven  once  boasted  of  having  lovea  one 
woman  for  seven  months  as  something  unusual.  But  had  Beethoven 
been  so  fortunate  as  to  meet  and  marry  a  woman  having  those 
qualities  which  Sir  Walter  Scott  says  the  wife  of  a  genius  should 
have — either  "  taste  enough  to  relish  her  husband's  performances, 
or  good  nature  enough  to  pardon  his  infirmities," — he  might  have 
been  blessed  with  a  love  not  of  seven  months,  but  of  seven  times 
seven  years.  Of  Shelley,  Mr.  Symonds  tells  us  that,  "  In  his  own 
words,  he  had  loved  Antigone  before  he  visited  this  earth  :  and  no 
one  woman  could  probably  have  made  him  happy,  because  he  was 
for  ever  demanding  more  from  love  than  it  can  give  in  the  mixed 
circumstances  of  mortal  life." 

Mr.  Galton,  who  has  made  such  a  careful  study  of  the  pheno- 
mena of  genius  and  marriage  (Hereditary  Genius),  remarks  on  the 
"great  fact  .  .  .  that  able  men  take  pleasure  in  the  society  of 
intelligent  women,  and,  if  they  can  find  such  as  would  in  other 
respects  be  suitable,  they  will  marry  them  in  preference  to  medio- 
crities." Unfortunately,  as  before  dwelt  on,  great  beauty  and 
great  intellect,  or  amiability,  do  not  always  coincide,  owing  to  the 
fact  that  pretty  girls  do  riot  feel  the  necessity  of  cultivating  their 
minds.  But  in  men  of  genius  their  own  store  of  intellect  is  so  great, 
and  their  admiration  for  Beauty  so  intense,  that  they  are  constantly 
liable  to  marry  silly  girls ;  or  before  marriage  to  flirt  with  one 
beauty  after  another  without  finding  satisfaction.  In  a  few  gen- 
erations, however,  there  will  doubtless  be  many  more  women  than 
now  or  in  the  past  who  will  be  intelligent,  amiable,  and  beautiful 
at  the  same  time  ;  and  such  women  will  be  able  to  fetter  even  the 
erratic  love  of  geniuses  with  adamantine  chains,  impervious  to  rust 
and  alteration,  and  thus  cure  them  of  their  Fickleness  and  their 
constant  effort  to  love  more  than  one  at  a  time. 

Poetic  Fictitiousness,  of  course,  is  a  trait  which  does  no  one  any 
harm,  and  often  enriches  literature  with  charming  fancies.  And 
as  for  the  two  remaining  characters  of  genius-Love — Ardour  and 
Precocity — it  is  evident  that  there  cannot  be  too  much  of  them  in 
the  world.  The  dawn  of  Love  is  always  the  dawn  of  so  much 
refinement  of  the  soul,  the  awakening  of  so  much  ambition,  that  it 
cannot  be  too  precocious;  and  the  more  ardent  it  is  the  more 
thoroughgoing  will  be  its  results.  Nor  need  a  big  fire  go  out 
sooner  than  a  small  one,  provided  there  is  a  constant  supply  of 


218  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

fresh  fuel — a  point  which  Balzac  has  discussed  with  much  elo- 
quence in  his  Physiologic  du  Mariage. 

Coleridge  says  "It  is  the  business  of  virtue  to  give  a  feeling 
and  a  passion  to  our  purer  intellect,  and  to  intellectualise  our 
feelings  and  passions."  Now  this  is  precisely  what  is  done  by 
Eomantic  Love,  which  first  originated  in  the  minds  of  men  of 
genius. 

"  The  might  of  one  fair  face  sublimes  my  love, 
For  it  hath  weaned  my  heart  from  low  desires." 

"  Sublimes  my  love."  These  three  words  of  Michael  Angelo  con- 
tain the  whole  philosophy  of  our  subject.  And  what  is  it  that 
sublimes  Love  chiefly  ?  "  The  might  of  one  fair  face  " — the  magic 
effect  of  Personal  Beauty.  Perhaps,  after  all,  the  greatest  differ- 
ence between  the  Love  of  a  genius  and  an  ordinary  mortal  is  that 
in  the  former  the  aesthetic  element — the  Admiration  of  Beauty — 
is  so  much  stronger,  making  up  two-thirds  of  the  whole  passion. 
And  as  a  taste  for  the  beautiful  in  art  and  nature  becomes  more 
common,  the  Love  of  common  mortals,  in  approaching  that  of 
genius,  will  more  and  more  partake  of  this  aesthetic  refinement — 
this  worship  of  Personal  Beauty  for  the  sake  of  the  higher  gratifi- 
cations it  yields  to  the  imagination. 

INSANITY  AND  LOVE 

ANALOGIES 

The  poets,  who  have  in  all  ages  insisted  on  the  analogies  be- 
tween genius  and  insanity,  have  also  long  since  discovered  a 
general  resemblance  between  Love  and  Insanity.  Indeed,  the 
notion  that  Love  is  a  sort  of  madness  is  as  old  as  Plato.  Love, 
as  understood  by  him — that  is,  man's  "  worship  of  youthful  mas- 
culine beauty  " — is,  he  says,  mad,  irrational,  superseding  reason 
and  prudence  in  the  individual  mind.  And  the  Stoics,  who  re- 
garded all  affections  as  maladies,  looked  upon  the  severest  of  the 
passions  as  a  grave  mental  disease. 

Modern  poetry  is  full  of  allusions  to  the  fatuous  folly  of  Love. 
Thus  Thomson — 

"  A  lover  is  the  very  fool  of  nature." 
Shakspere — 

"The lunatic,  the  lover,  and  the  poet 
Are  of  imagination  all  compact." 

"  Thou  blind  fool,  Love,  what  dost  thou  to  mine  eyes, 
That  they  behold  and  see  not  what  they  see  ? " 

And  the  mischievous  Rosalind  informs  us  that  "  Love  is  merely  a 


INSANITY  AND  LOVE  219 

madness,  and,  I  tell  you,  deserves  as  well  a  dark  house  and  a  whip 
as  madmen  do ;  and  the  reason  why  they  are  not  so  punished  and 
cured  is,  that  the  lunacy  is  so  ordinary  that  the  whippers  are  in 
love  too." 

All  this  is  mere  poetic  banter ;  but  there  is  a  substratum  of 
truth  which  the  poets  must  have  dimly  felt.  Modern  alienists  do 
not  treat  their  patients  to  dark  rooms  and  whips,  as  their  predeces- 
sors did.  They  regard  the  maladies  of  their  patients  as  brain 
diseases,  which  have  been  studied  and  classified,  and  are  treated  on 
general  hygienic  and  therapeutic  principles.  A  comparison  of  the 
classifications  adopted  in  psychiatry  with  the  symptoms  of  Love 
shows  that  Insanity  and  Love  resemble  each  other  especially  in  three 
common  traits, — the  presence  of  Illusions,  a  sort  of  Delirium  of 
Persecution,  and  the  Desire  for  Solitude. 

There  are  two  ways  in  which  madmen  people  the  outside  world 
with  phantoms  of  their  own  imaginations — by  means  of  illusions 
and  of  hallucinations. 

Hallucinations  are  pure  figments  of  the  imagination,  without 
any  object  corresponding  to  them  or  suggesting  them  in  the  outer 
world.  A  patient  suffering  from  them  will  stare  into  vacancy  and 
see  a  friend,  or  perhaps  the  devil  with  horns,  tail,  and  hoofs ;  and 
he  sees  him  as  vividly  as  if  he  were  really  there  to  be  touched ; 
the  reason  being  that  in  that  part  of  the  brain  where  impressions 
of  sight  are  localised  a  diseased  action  is  set  up  which  suggests  a 
picture  that  is  forthwith  projected  into  outward  space — as  usual 
with  all  sense-impressions.  In  a  word,  the  patient  paints  the  devil 
in  his  mind's  eye,  and  there  he  is. 

Illusions,  on  the  other  hand,  have  real  external  objects  for  their 
cause ;  but  the  diseased  imagination  so  falsifies  the  objects  that 
there  is  little  or  no  resemblance  between  the  mental  vision  and 
the  outside  reality.  A  patient  suffering  from  illusions  sees  a  candle 
and  thinks  it  is  the  sun,  hears  a  footstep  and  thinks  it  thunder. 

Is  not  this  precisely  what  Shakspere  chides  Cupid  for — that  he 
makes  our  eyes  "  behold  and  see  not  what  they  see  1 "  or  makes 
them  "see  Helen's  beauty  in  a  brow  of  Egypt1?"  Concerning 
Burns  we  have  just  read  that  "  there  was  often  a  great  disparity 
between  his  fair  captivator  and  her  attributes  " — that  is,  the  attri- 
butes with  which  she  was  invested  by  her  lover. 

The  lover,  like  the  lunatic,  has  had  moments  when,  "  beholding 
his  maiden,  he  half-knows  she  is  not  that  which  he  worships " ; 
but  such  intervals  are  rare.  Take  a  madman  who  believes  his 
body  is  made  of  glass,  and  throw  him  downstairs  :  none  the  less 
will  he  believe  in  his  vitreous  constitution.  Show  a  lover  the 


220  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

most  beautiful  woman  in  the  world,  still  will  he  believe  his  own 
Dulcinea  a  hundred  times  more  charming. 

There  is,  in  the  second  place,  a  very  common  form  of  insanity, 
called  the  Delirium  of  Persecution.  The  sufferer  imagines  that 
everybody  he  passes  notices  him,  suspects  him  of  something,  or 
even  intends  him  some  harm.  Dr.  Hammond  speaks  of  a  patient 
of  this  class  "  who  was  sure  that  all  the  clergymen  had  entered 
into  a  conspiracy  to  '  pray  him  into  hell ' !  He  went  to  the 
churches  to  hear  what  they  had  to  say,  and  discovered  adroit 
allusions  to  himself,  and  hidden  invocations  to  God  for  his  eternal 
damnation,  in  the  most  harmless  and  platitudinous  expressions. 
He  wrote  letters  to  various  pastors  of  churches,  denouncing  them 
for  their  uncharitable  conduct  toward  him,  and  threatening  them 
with  bodily  damage  if  they  persisted  in  their  efforts  to  secure  the 
destruction  of  his  soul." 

"  Quand  nous  aimons,"  says  Pascal,  "  nous  nous  imaginons  que 
tout  le  monde  s'en  apercoit " — when  we  are  in  love  we  imagine 
that  everybody  perceives  it.  The  lover  feels  so  awkward  and 
embarrassed  that  he  thinks  every  one  about  him  must  discover  his 
secret ;  and  this  constant  apprehension  doubles  his  awkwardness^ 
and  in  most  cases  does  lead  to  his  detection.  And  the  jealous 
lover  to  whom  "  trifles  light  as  air  "  are  confirmations  of  infidelity, 
who  sees  dangerous  rivalry  in  the  most  superficial  attentions,  and 
inconstancy  in  the  most  harmless  smile  she  bestows  on  another — 
how  does  he  differ  from  the  man  who  thought  the  clergy  were 
trying  to  pray  him  into  hell,  except  that  in  the  one  case  the  dis- 
ordered imagination  is  more  easily  restored  to  its  normal  functions 
than  in  the  other  ? 

Thirdly,  the  lunatic  and  the  lover,  in  their  melancholy  stages, 
have  a  common  fondness  for  Solitude.  For  days  and  weeks 
a  patient  will  sit  motionless,  indifferent  to  everybody  and  every- 
thing in  the  world  except  the  one  idea  that  has  fixed  on  his  brain 
like  a  leech,  and  is  sucking  its  life-blood.  Nothing,  says  an 
observer,  is  so  noticeable  on  visiting  an  asylum  where  the  patients 
are  allowed  some  liberty,  as  the  way  in  which  each  one  seeks 
a  solitary  place  regardless  of  his  fellows. 

Are  not,  in  the  same  way — 

**  Fountain-heads  and  pathless  groves 
Places  which  pale  passion  loves  ? " — FLETCHER. 

But  what  madman  in  his  wildest  flights  ever  conceived  anything 
quite  so  sublimely  solitary  as  the  flight  which  Burns  projected  for 
himself  and  Clarinda  (in  lovers'  arithmetic  twice  one  are  one)  in 


INSANITY  AND  LOVE  221 

the  following  epistle :  "  Imagine  .  .  .  that  we  were  set  free  from 
the  laws  of  gravitation  which  bind  us  to  this  globe,  and  could  at 
pleasure  fly,  without  inconvenience,  through  all  the  yet  unconjec- 
tured  bounds  of  creation,  what  a  life  of  bliss  would  we  lead,  in  our 
mutual  pursuit  of  virtue  and  knowledge,  and  our  mutual  enjoyment 
of  love  and  friendship  ! 

"I  see  you  laughing  at  my  fairy  fancies,  and  calling  me  a 
voluptuous  Mahometan;  but  I  am  certain  I  would  be  a  happy 
creature  beyond  anything  we  call  bliss  here  below ;  nay,  it  would 
be  a  paradise  congenial  to  you  too.  Don't  you  see  us,  hand  in 
hand,  or  rather,  my  arm  about  your  lovely  waist,  making  our 
remarks  on  Sirius,  the  nearest  of  the  fixed  stars ;  or,  surveying  a 
comet  flaming  innoxious  by  us,  as  we  just  now  would  mark 
the  passing  pomp  of  a  travelling  monarch ;  or,  in  a  shady  bower  of 
Mercury  or  Venus,  dedicating  the  hour  to  love,  in  mutual  converse, 
relying  honour,  and  revelling  endearment,  while  the  most  exalted 
strains  of  poesy  and  harmony  would  be  the  ready,  spontaneous 
language  of  our  souls." 

Thus  we  have  in  the  madman's  Illusions  an  analogy  with  Love's 
Hyperbolising  tendency ;  in  the  Delirium  of  Persecution  a  sugges- 
tion of  Jealousy ;  in  the  Desire  for  Solitude  a  reminder  of  Love's 
Exclusiveness,  and  desire  to  be  cast  on  a  desert  island. 

Gallantry,  again,  has  in  the  past  frequently  assumed  an  extra- 
vagant form  bordering  on  madness.  Thus,  with  reference  to 
a  Greek  girl  to  whom  Byron  made  love  in  Athens,  Moore  says, 
"  It  was,  if  I  recollect  right,  in  making  love  to  one  of  these  girls 
that  he  had  recourse  to  an  act  of  courtship  often  practised  in  that 
country — namely,  giving  himself  a  wound  across  the  breast  with 
his  dagger.  The  young  Athenian,  by  his  own  account,  looked  on 
very  coolly  during  the  operation,  considering  it  a  fit  tribute  to  her 
beauty,  but  in  no  wise  moved  to  gratitude." 

In  Spain,  toward  the  beginning  of  the  last  century,  Gallantry 
appears  to  have  assumed  a  form  of  mad  extravagance.  As  Mme. 
d'Aunoy  relates  in  her  Memoires  sur  VEspagne,  no  man  who 
accompanied  a  lady  was  so  rude  as  to  give  her  his  hand  or  to  take 
her  arm  under  his.  He  only  wrapped  his  cloak  around  his  arm, 
and  then  allowed  her  to  rest  her  arm  on  the  elbow.  Nor  was  even 
a  lover  permitted  to  kiss  his  love  or  caress  her  otherwise  than  by 
tenderly  grasping  her  arm  with  his  hands. 

Of  mediaeval  lovers'  madness  cases  have  been  cited  elsewhere, 
showing  to  what  crazy  excess  the  Knight-errants  and  Troubadours 
sometimes  carried  their  gallant  devotion.  One  more  amusing 
illustration  may  here  be  added :  the  oft-cited  cases  of  Peire  Vidal, 


222  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

a  Troubadour  of  the  twelfth  century,  who,  to  please  his  beloved, 
whose  name  was  Loba  (wolf),  had  himself  sewed  up  in  a  wolf's 
hide  and  went  about  the  mountains  howling  until  his  manoeuvres 
were  brought  to  a  sad  end  by  some  shepherd  dogs,  who,  having  no 
sense  of  humour,  gave  him  such  a  shaking  that  he  was  only  too 
glad  to  resume  his  normal  attitude. 

There  is,  in  fact,  hardly  a  feature  of  Love  which,  in  its  exalted 
manifestations,  does  not  occasionally  suggest  a  madhouse.  The 
extravagant  Pride  shown  by  a  commonplace  man  in  his  more  com- 
monplace bride,  is  quite  as  ludicrous  as  a  lunatic's  delusion  that  he 
is  a  millionaire  or  emperor  of  the  five  continents.  The  sham 
capture  of  a  bride  still  practised  among  many  nations  when  all 
parties  are  willing,  illustrates  a  form  of  Coyness  which  would  appear 
as  pure  lunacy  to  one  unfamiliar  with  the  origin  of  that  custom. 

EROTOMANIA,  OK  REAL  LOVE-SICKNESS 

Besides  these  general  analogies  there  is  a  form  of  mental  disease 
which  is  genuine  love-sickness,  the  outcome  of  brain  disease,  and 
which  often  seems,  for  all  the  world,  like  a  deliberate  caricature  of 
Coquetry. 

"  It  often  happens,"  says  Dr.  Hammond,  "  that  the  subjects  of 
emotional  monomania  of  the  variety  under  consideration  do  not 
restrict  their  love  to  any  one  person.  They  adore  the  whole  male 
sex,  and  will  make  advances  to  any  man  with  whom  they  are 
brought  into  even  the  slightest  association.  If  confined  in  an 
asylum  they  simper  and  clasp  their  hands,  and  roll  their  eyes  to 
the  attendants,  especially  the  physicians,  and  even  the  male 
patients  are  not  below  their  affections.  There  is  very  little 
constancy  in  their  love.  They  change  from  one  man  to  another 
with  the  utmost  facility  and  upon  the  slightest  pretext.  '  I  am 

very  much  in  love  with  Dr.  ,'  said  a  woman  to  me  in  an 

asylum  that  I  was  visiting,  *  but  he  was  late  yesterday  in  coming 
to  the  ward,  and  now  I  love  you.  You  will  come  often  to  see  me, 
won't  you  ? '  While  she  was  speaking  the  superintendent  entered 
the  ward.  *  Oh,  here  comes  my  first  and  only  love ! '  she  ex- 
claimed. 'Why  have  you  stayed  away  so  long  from  your 
Eliza  ?'" 

Professor  von  Krafft-Ebing,  in  his  admirable  Lekrbuch  der 
Psychiatric,  thus  characterises  Erotomania  in  general :  "  The 
kernel  of  the  whole  matter  is  the  delusion  of  being  singled  out  and 
loved  by  a  person  of  the  other  sex,  who  regularly  belongs  to  a 
higher  social  sphere.  And  it  deserves  to  be  noted  that  the  love 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  LOVE  223 

felt  by  the  patient  towards  this  person  is  a  romantic,  ecstatic,  but 
entirely  '  Platonic '  affection.  In  this  respect  these  patients  remind 
one  of  the  knight-errants  and  minstrels  of  bygone  times,  whom 
Cervantes  has  so  incisively  lashed  in  his  Don  Quixote.  .  .  . 

"  From  the  looks  and  gestures  of  the  beloved  individual  they 
draw  the  inference  that  they  in  return  are  not  regarded  with  indif- 
ference. With  astonishing  rapidity  they  lose  their  self-possession. 
The  most  harmless  incidents  are  regarded  by  them  as  signs  of  love, 
and  an  encouragement  to  draw  near.  Even  newspaper  advertise- 
ments relating  to  others  are  supposed  to  come  from  the  person  in 
question.  Finally,  hallucinations  make  their  appearance,  by  the 
aid  of  which  the  patients  begin  to  be  conversant  with  the  object  of 
their  love.  Illusions  also  supervene ;  in  the  conversations  of  others 
the  patient  fancies  he  hears  references  to  his  love-affairs.  He  feels 
happy,  exalted  in  his  estimate  of  himself.  .  .  . 

"At  last  the  patient  compromises  himself  by  acting  in  con- 
sonance with  his  delusion,  thus  making  himself  ridiculous  and 
impossible  in  society,  and  necessitating  his  confinement  in  an 
asylum." 

THE  LANGUAGE  OF  LOVE 

The  insane  freaks  of  erotomaniacs,  and  the  analogous,  ludicrous 
exaggerations  in  the  expression  and  conduct  of  lovers,  may  be 
regarded  as  the  pathologic  and  the  comic  sides  of  Love's  Language. 

Normally,  Romantic  Love  has  no  fewer  than  three  languages  : — 
Words,  Facial  Expression,  and  Caresses,  including  Kisses.  It  will 
at  once  be  seen  that  this  classification  involves  a  crescendo  < ,  from 
the  weakest  form  of  expression  to  its  climax  in  kissing.  Kissing, 
indeed,  though  it  comes  under  the  head  of  Caresses,  is  of  so  much 
significance  that  it  may  be  regarded,  if  not  as  a  separate  language 
of  Love,  at  least  as  a  special  dialect — perhaps  the  long-sought 
world-language  intelligible  to  all  ? 

i. — WORDS 

Though  the  greatest  poets  have  striven  to  become  virtuosi  in 
the  art  of  expressing  Love  in  written  language,  yet  words  are  the 
weakest  and  least  trustworthy  mode  of  expressing  the  amorous 
emotions.  Least  trustworthy,  because  the  male  flatterer,  as  well 
as  the  female  coquette,  constantly  use  language  to  conceal  their 
thoughts  and  real  emotions.  Weakest,  because  words  are  less 
eloquent  even  than  silence.  For — 


2-24  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

"  They  that  are  rich  in  words  must  needs  discover 
They  are  but  poor  in  that  which  makes  a  lover  ;** 
And 

"  Silence  in  Love  bewrays  more  woe 
Than  words  though  ne'er  so  witty." — RALEIGH. 

Cordelia's  love  was  deeper  than  that  of  her  sisters — too  deep  to 
be  expressed  in  formal  words.  And  King  Lear  scorned  her  and 
favoured  her  sisters ;  even  as  shallow  maidens  constantly  look  down 
on  silent,  awkward  adorers  of  deep  affections,  and  throw  themselves 
away  on  shallow,  fickle,  loquacious  Lotharios,  because  they  do  not 
understand  the  real  Language  of  Love,  which,  according  to  a  stupid 
old  myth,  every  woman  is  supposed  to  know  by  intuition  or 
instinct. 

H. — FACIAL  EXPRESSION, 

although  more  trustworthy  than  written  or  spoken  words,  may 
sometimes  prove  deceptive  too ;  for  the  cunning  coquette  who  daily 
feigns  Love  to  attract  poor  moths  by  her  brilliant  fascinations, 
becomes  in  time  so  perfect  an  actress  that  the  coldest  of  cynics 
may  be  deceived  by  her  wiles. 

In  his  great  work  on  the  Expression  of  the  Emotions,  Darwin 
remarks  that  although,  "  when  lovers  meet,  we  know  that  their 
hearts  beat  quickly,  their  breathing  is  hurried,  and  their  faces 
flush ;"  yet  "  love  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  any  proper  or  peculiar 
means  of  expression ;  and  this  is  intelligible,  as  it  has  not  habitually 
led  to  any  special  line  of  action.  No  doubt,  as  affection  is  a  plea- 
surable sensation,  it  generally  causes  a  gentle  smile  and  some 
brightening  of  the  eyes." 

Inasmuch  as  a  flushed  face  and  transient  blushes,  a  gentle  smile 
and  brightening  of  the  eyes,  are  characteristic  of  other  emotions 
besides  Love,  Darwin  is  right;  yet  he  ignores  two  peculiarities  of 
expression  by  which  a  person  in  Love  may  be  instantaneously 
recognised. 

"A  lover,"  says  Chamfort,  "is  a  man  who  endeavours  to  be 
more  amiable  than  it  is  possible  for  him  to  be ;  and  this  is  the 
reason  that  almost  all  lovers  appear  ridiculous."  Who  has  not 
seen  this  unmistakable,  ludicrous  expression  of  masculine  Love — 
head  slightly  inclined  to  the  left ;  face  as  near  her  face  as  possible, 
echoing  every  expression  of  hers ;  a  saccharine,  beseeching  smile  on 
the  kiss-hungry  lips,  producing  on  the  spectator  an  uneasy  sense  of 
unstable  equilibrium — as  if  in  one  more  moment  the  force  of 
amorous  gravitation  would  draw  down  his  face  to  hers  1 

Add  to  this  his  embarrassed  gestures,  the  over-sweet  falsetto  of 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  LOVE  225 

his  voice — an  octave  higher  than  when  he  speaks  to  others, — and 
the  peculiar  lover's  pallor,  and  the  picture  is  complete— 

'•Why  so  pale  and  wan,  fond  lover  ? 

Prithee,  why  so  pale  ? 
Will,  when  looking  well  can't  move  her, 
Looking  ill  prevail  ?" — SUCKLING. 

To  women  Cupid  is  kinder.  Instead  of  making  them  appear 
ludicrous,  Love  has  the  power  of  transforming  even  a  homely 
feminine  face  into  a  vision  of  loveliness  by  throwing  a  halo  of 
tender  expression  around  it.  This  wondrous  transformation  effected 
by  Love  is  one  of  its  greatest  miracles ;  and  to  one  who  has  seen 
the  girl  previously  it  immediately  betrays  her  infatuation.  It  is  a 
kind  of  emotional  calligraphy  in  which  the  merest  tyro  can  read, 
"I  love  him." 

And  this  temporary  transformation  of  homely  into  beautiful 
faces,  this  fusing  and  moulding  of  the  features  into  forms  of  volup- 
tuous expression,  is  of  extreme  psychologic  interest ;  for  it  shows 
that,  after  all,  the  exalted,  extravagant  image  of  Her  perfections 
in  the  lover's  mind  is  not  purely  imaginary.  It  is  not  so  much 
owing  to  a  difference  of  "  taste  "  that  he  loves  her  more  than  others 
do,  as  because  she  actually  does  look  more  beautiful  when  her  eyes 
are  fastened  on  him  than  when  looking  at  any  other  man. 

m. — CARESSES 

"Tenderness,"  says  Professor  Bain,  "is  a  pleasurable  emotion, 
variously  stimulated,  whose  effort  is  to  draw  human  beings  into 
mutual  embrace."  Darwin  finds  the  peculiarity  of  love  in  the  same 
desire  for  contact ;  and,  as  usual,  he  seeks  for  the  origin  of  this 
desire,  and  endeavours  to  trace  it  to  analogous  peculiarities  of  the 
animals  most  closely  related  to  us. 

"  With  the  lower  animals,"  he  says,  "  we  see  the  same  principle 
of  pleasure  derived  from  contact  in  association  with  love.  Dogs 
and  cats  manifestly  take  pleasure  in  rubbing  against  their  masters 
and  mistresses,  and  in  being  rubbed  or  patted  by  them.  Many 
kinds  of  monkeys,  as  I  am  assured  by  the  keepers  in  the  Zoological 
Gardens,  delight  in  fondling  and  being  fondled  by  each  other,  and 
by  persons  to  whom  they  are  attached.  Mr.  Bartlett  has  described 
to  me  the  behaviour  of  two  Chimpanzees,  rather  older  animals  than 
those  generally  imported  into  this  country,  when  they  were  first 
brought  together.  They  sat  opposite,  touching  each  other  ivith  their 
much-protruded  lips,  and  the  one  put  his  hand  on  the  shoulder  of 

Q 


226  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

the  other.  Then  they  mutually  folded  each  other  in  their  arms. 
Afterwards  they  stood  up,  each  with  one  arm  on  the  shoulder  of 
the  other,  lifted  up  their  heads,  opened  their  mouths  and  yelled 
with  delight." 

Concerning  human  beings  Darwin  remarks :  "  A  strong  desire 
to  touch  the  beloved  person  is  commonly  felt ;  and  love  is  ex- 
pressed by  this  means  more  plainly  than  by  any  other.  Hence  we 
long  to  clasp  in  our  arms  those  we  tenderly  love.  We  probably 
owe  this  desire  to  inherited  habit,  in  association  with  the  nursing 
and  tending  of  our  children,  and  with  the  mutual  caresses  of 
lovers." 

When  love  first  dawns  on  the  mind,  the  faintest  superficial  con- 
tact flashes  along  the  nerves  as  a  thrill  of  delicious  emotion.  To 
walk  along  the  beach  in  a  stiff  breeze,  and  have  her  veil  acciden- 
tally flutter  in  his  face,  is  a  romantic  incident  on  which  a  youthful 
lover's  memory  feasts  for  a  month.  If  allowed  to  carry  her  shawl 
on  his  arm,  he  would  not  feel  the  cold  of  a  Siberian  winter.  And 
later,  what  a  variety  of  tell-tale  caresses  are  there  by  which  mutual 
Love  may  be  revealed  !  It  is  not  the  voice  alone  that  can  say  "  I 
love  you";  nor  the  speaking  eyes.  Confessions  of  Love,  proposals 
and  acceptance — complete  dramas  of  Love — have  been  enacted  by 

Xthe  language  of  two  pairs  of  feet  that  have  accidentally  touched 
under  the  table.  A  slight  pressure  of  the  hand  in  the  ballroom 
has  told  thousands  of  lovers,  before  a  word  was  spoken,  that  now 
they  may  soon  put  their  arms  round  that  lovely  waist  without  the 
excuse  of  a  waltz  or  polka. 

One  form  of  hand-caress,  dear  alike  to  mothers  and  lovers,  is 
thus  described  by  Professor  Mantegazza  :  "In  a  caress  we  give 
and  receive  at  the  same  time.  The  hand  which  distributes  love, 
as  by  a  magnetic  effusion,  receives  it  in  return  from  the  skin  of 
the  beloved  person.  Hence  it  is  that  one  of  the  most  common 
and  most  thrilling  of  the  expressions  of  love  consists  in  passing 
the  hand  through  the  hair.  The  hand  finds,  in  this  labyrinth  of 
supple,  living  threads,  the  means  of  multiplying  infinitely  the 
points  of  amorous  contact.  It  appears  as  if  each  hair  were  an 
electric  wire,  putting  us  into  direct  connection  with  the  senses, 
with  the  heart,  and  even  with  the  thoughts,  of  those  we  love.  It 
is  not  without  reason  that  woman's  hair  has  long  been  given  as  a 
token  of  love." 

What  a  clumsy  thing  is  language,  what  an  awkward  thing  a 
formal  proposal  stuttered  out  by  a  lover  more  embarrassed  than  if 
lie  were  an  amateur  actor  appearing  on  the  stage  for  the  first  time, 
as  Romeo  before  an  international  audience  of  actors  and  critics ! 


KISSING— PAST,  PRESENT,  AND  FUTURE  227 

How  much  less  natural,  less  poetic,  it  is  to  hear  the  confession  of 
Love  than  to  feel  it — 

"  When  panting  sighs  the  bosom  fill, 
And  hands,  by  chance  united,  thrill 
At  once  with  one  delicious  pain." — CLOUGH. 

What  poet,  and  were  he  a  genius  in  condensation,  could 
compress  into  a  line,  a  page,  a  volume,  such  an  ocean  of  emotion 
as  is  contained  in  a  momentary  caress  of  the  hand  ?  Not  even  the 
moment  when  the  lovers  are  "  imparadised  in  one  another's  arms  " 
surpasses  this  in  ecstasy. 

Yet  there  is  a  more  delicious  rapture  still  in  the  drama  of 
Courtship.  "  Love's  sweetest  language  is,"  as  Herrick  says,  "  a 
kiss."  All  other  caresses  are  valueless  without  a  kiss  ;  for  is  not 
a  kiss  the  very  autograph  of  Love  ? 

But  labial  contact  is  a  subject  of  such  supreme  importance  in 
the  philosophy  and  history  of  Love  that  it  cannot  be  disposed  of 
briefly  as  one  form  of  caressing,  but  demands  a  chapter  by  itself. 


KISSING— PAST,  PRESENT,  AND  FUTURE 

"The  lips,"  says  Sir  Charles  Bell,  "are  of  all  the  features  the 
most  susceptible  of  action,  and  the  most  direct  index  of  the 
feelings."  No  wonder  that  Cupid  selected  them  as  his  private 
seal,  without  which  no  passion  can  be  stamped  as  genuine. 

For  the  expression  of  all  other  emotions,  by  words  or  signs,  one 
pair  of  lips  suffices.  Love  alone  requires  for  its  expression  two 
pairs  of  Hps.  Could  anything  more  eloquently  demonstrate  the 
superiority  of  the  romantic  passion  over  all  others  1 

Steele  said  of  kissing  that  "  Nature  was  its  author,  and  it  began 
with  the  first  courtship."  Steele  evidently  evolved  this  theory  out 
of  his  "  inner  consciousness,"  for  the  facts  do  not  agree  with  it.  The 
art  of  Kissing  has,  like  Love  itself,  been  gradually  developed  in 
connection  with  the  higher  stages  of  culture.  Traces  of  it  are 
found  among  animals  and  savages ;  the  ancients  often  misunder- 
stood its  purport  and  object,  as  did  our  mediaeval  ancestors ;  and 
it  is  only  in  recent  times  that  Kissing  has  tended  to  become 
what  it  should  be — the  special  and  exclusive  language  of  romantic 
and  conjugal  love. 

AMONG   ANIMALS 

Honour  to  whom  honour  is  due.  The  Chimpanzee  seems  to 
have  been  the  first  who  discovered  the  charm  of  mutual  labial 


228  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

contact.  In  the  description  by  Mr.  Bartlett  just  referred  to,  the 
two  Chimpanzees  "  sat  opposite,  touching  each  other  with  their 
much-protruded  lips."  And  in  some  notes  on  the  Chimpanzee  in 
Central  Park,  New  York,  by  Dr.  C.  Pitfield  Mitchell,  published  in 
the  Journal  of  Comparative  Medicine,  and  Surgery,  January  1885, 
we  find  the  following :  "  That  tender  emotions  are  experienced 
may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  he  pressed  the  kitten  to  his 
breast  and  kissed  it,  holding  it  very  gently  in  both  hands.  In 
kissing,  the  lips  are  pouted  and  the  tongue  protruded,  and  both 
are  pressed  upon  the  object  of  affection.  The  act  is  not  accom- 
panied by  any  sound,  thus  differing  from  ordinary  human 
osculation." 

Dogs,  especially  when  young,  may  be  seen  occasionally  exchang- 
ing a  sort  of  tongue-kiss ;  and  who  has  not  seen  dogs  innumerable 
times  make  a  sudden  sly  dash  at  the  lips  of  master  or  mistress  and 
try  to  steal  a  kiss  ?  The  affectionate  manner  in  which  a  cow  and 
calf  eagerly  lick  one  another  in  succession  may  be  regarded  as  quite 
as  genuine  a  kiss  as  a  human  kiss  on  hand,  forehead,  or  cheek ;  and 
it  is  probable  that  even  in  the  billing  of  doves  the  motive  is  a 
vague  pleasure  of  contact. 

AMONG   SAVAGES 

we  meet  once  more  with  the  anomalous  fact  that  they  seem 
ignorant,  on  the  whole,  of  a  clever  invention  known  even  to  some 
animals.  Sir  John  Lubbock,  after  referring  to  Steele's  opinion 
that  kissing  is  coeval  with  courtship,  remarks:  "It  was,  on  the 
contrary,  entirely  unknown  to  the  Tahitians,  the  New  Zealanders, 
the  Papuas,  and  the  aborigines  of  Australia,  nor  was  it  in  use 
among  the  Somals  or  the  Esquimaux."  Jemmy  Button,  the  Fuegian, 
told  Darwin  that  kissing  was  unknown  in  his  land  ;  and  another 
writer  gives  an  amusing  account  of  an  attempt  he  made  to  kiss  a 
young  negro  girl.  She  was  greatly  terrified,  probably  imagining 
him  a  new  species  of  cannibal  who  had  made  up  his  mind  to  eat 
her  on  the  spot,  raw,  and  without  salt  and  pepper. 

Monteiro,  in  a  passage  previously  quoted,  says  that  in  all  the 
long  years  he  has  been  in  Africa  he  has  "  never  seen  a  negro  put 
his  arm  round  a  woman's  waist,  or  give  or  receive  any  caress 
whatever  that  would  indicate  the  slightest  loving  regard  or  affection 
on  either  side." 

Considering  the  general  obtuseness  of  a  savage's  nerves,  it  is  no 
wonder  that  the  subtle  thrill  of  a  kiss  should  be  unknown  to  him. 
In  many  cases,  moreover,  Kissing  is  rendered  physically  impossible 


KISSING— PAST,  PRESENT,  AND  FUTURE  229 

by  the  habit  indulged  in  of  mutilating  and  enlarging  the  lips.  For 
instance,  Schweinfurth,  in  his  Heart  of  Africa,  says  that  among 
the  Bongo  women  "  the  lower  lip  is  extended  horizontally  till  it 
projects  far  beyond  the  upper,  which  is  also  bored  and  fitted  with 
a  copper  plate  or  nail,  and  now  and  then  by  a  little  ring,  and  some- 
times by  a  bit  of  straw,  about  as  thick  as  a  lucifer  match."  Many 
other  similar  cases  could  be  cited. 

Evidently,  under  these  circumstances,  kissing   would  prove  a 
snare  and  a  delusion. 


THE   ORIGIN   OF   KISSING 

is  a  topic  on  which  doctors  disagree,  the  opinions  of  Darwin  and 
Mr.  Spencer  in  particular  differing  as  widely  as  their  views  regarding 
the  origin  of  music.  Mr.  Spencer  traces  the  primitive  delight  in 
osculation  to  the  gustatory  sense,  Darwin  to  contact. 

"Obviously,"  says  Mr.  Spencer,  "the  billing  of  doves  or  pigeons, 
and  the  like  action  of  love-birds,  indicates  an  affection  which  is 
gratified  by  the  gustatory  sensation.  No  act  of  this  kind  on  the 
part  of  an  inferior  creature,  as  of  a  cow  licking  a  calf,  can  have  any 
other  origin  than  the  direct  prompting  of  a  desire  which  gains  by 
the  act  satisfaction ;  and  in  such  a  case  the  satisfaction  is  that 
which  vivid  perception  of  offspring  gives  to  the  maternal  yearning. 
In  some  animals  like  acts  arise  from  other  forms  of  affection.  Lick- 
ing the  hand,  or,  where  it  is  accessible,  the  face,  is  a  common  display 
of  attachment  on  a  dog's  part ;  and  when  we  remember  how  keen 
must  be  the  olfactory  sense  by  which  a  dog  traces  his  master,  we 
cannot  doubt  that  to  his  gustatory  sense,  too,  there  is  yielded  some 
impression  —  an  impression  associated  with  those  pleasures  of 
affection  which  his  master's  presence  gives. 

"  The  inference  that  kissing,  as  a  mark  of  fondness  in  the  human 
race,  has  a  kindred  origin,  is  sufficiently  probable.  Though  kissing 
is  not  universal — though  the  negro  races  do  not  understand  it, 
and  though,  as  we  have  seen,  there  are  cases  where  sniffing  replaces 
it — yet,  being  common  to  unlikely  and  widely-dispersed  peoples, 
we  may  conclude  that  it  originated  in  the  same  manner  as  the 
analogous  action  among  lower  creatures.  .  .  .  From  kissing  as  a 
natural  sign  of  affection,  there  is  derived  the  kissing  which,  as  a 
means  of  simulating  affection,  gratifies  those  who  are  kissed ;  and, 
by  gratifying  them,  propitiates  them.  Hence  an  obvious  root  for 
the  kissing  of  feet,  hands,  garments,  as  a  part  of  ceremonial." 

Darwin,  on  the  other  hand,  holds  that  kissing  "  is  so  far  innate 
or  natural  that  it  apparently  depends  on  pleasure  from  close 


230  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

contact  with  a  beloved  person  ;  and  it  is  replaced  in  various  parts 
of  the  world,  by  the  rubbing  of  noses,  as  with  the  New  Zealandeis 
and  Laplanders,  by  the  rubbing  or  patting  of  the  arms,  breasts,  or 
stomachs,  or  by  one  man  striking  his  own  face  with  the  hands  or 
feet  of  another.  Perhaps  the  practice  of  blowing,  as  a  mark  of 
affection,  on  various  parts  of  the  body  may  depend  on  the  sams 
principle." 

Has  Mr.  Spencer  ever  kissed  a  girl  ?  Certainly,  to  one  who  has, 
his  theory  of  the  gustatory  origin  of  Kissing  would  seem  like  a  joke 
were  it  not  stated  with  so  much  scientific  pomp  and  circumstance. 
The  billing  of  doves  and  love-birds,  in  the  first  place,  cannot  be 
regarded  as  a  matter  of  taste,  literally,  because  in  birds  the  sense 
of  taste  is  commonly  very  rudimentary  or  quite  absent,  as  their 
habit  of  swallowing  seeds  and  other  food  whole  and  dry  would 
make  a  sense  which  can  only  judge  of  things  in  a  state  of  solution 
quite  useless.  The  sense  of  touch,  on  the  other  hand,  is  exceed- 
ingly delicate  in  the  bill  of  birds,  which  is,  as  it  were,  their  feeler 
or  hand. 

That  the  motive  which  prompts  cows  and  calves  to  lick  one. 
another  is  likewise  tactile  rather  than  gustatory,  I  had  occasion 
to  observe  only  a  few  days  ago  in  a  place  worthy  of  so  romantic  a 
subject  as  the  experimental  study  of  kissing.  Scene  :  a  green 
mountain -meadow  above  Murren,  Switzerland.  Frame  of  the 
picture,  a  semicircle  of  snow-giants,  including  Wetterhorn,  Eiger, 
Monch,  Jungfrau,  Breithorn,  etc.  Cows  and  calves  in  the  meadow, 
not  in  the  least  disturbed  by  the  avalanches  thundering  down  the 
side  of  the  Jungfrau  every  twenty  minutes.  Cow  licks  calf,  and 
calf  retaliates  by  licking  the  cow's  neck.  Cow  enjoys  it  immensely, 
holding  her  head  up  as  high  as  possible,  with  an  expression  of 
intense  enjoyment,  just  like  a  dog  when  you  rub  and  pat  his  neck. 
Ergo,  as  cow  was  not  licking  but  being  licked,  her  enjoyment 
must  have  been  tactile,  not  gustatory.  To  the  cow  her  tongue 
is  what  the  bill  is  to  a  bird — her  most  mobile  organ,  her  feeler, 
and  hand. 

Possibly  Mr.  Spencer  was  misled  into  his  gustatory  theory  by 
a  too  literal  interpretation  of  a  habit  poets  have  always  had  ot 
calling  a  kiss  sweet.  Among  the  Romans  a  love-kiss  was  distin- 
guished from  other  kisses  by  being  called  a  suavium  or  sweet 
thing  ;  and  a  modern  German  poet  boldly  compares  the  flavour  of 
kisses  to  wild  strawberries  (perhaps  she  had  just  been  eating  some). 
Yet  all  this  belongs  to  fancy's  fairyland.  Kisses  are  called  sweet 
for  the  same  reason  that  we  speak  of  the  sweet  concords  of  music. 
i.e.  because  the  language  of  aesthetics  is  so  scantily  developed  thai 


KISSING— PAST,  PRESENT,  AND  FUTURE  231 

we  are  constantly  compelled  to  borrow  terms  from  one  sense  and 
apply  them  to  another,  when  their  only  resemblance  is  that  they 
are  both  agreeable  or  otherwise. 

There  is  a  very  prevalent  impression  that  the  senses  of  savages 
are  more  delicate  than  ours.  In  one  way  they  are.  A  savage  can 
often  see  an  object  at  a  greater  distance,  and  hear  a  fainter  sound, 
than  a  white  man.  But  in  what  may  be  called  aesthetic  as  distin- 
guished from  physical  refinement,  savages  are  vastly  our  inferiors. 
A  savage  can  hardly  tell  the  difference  between  two  adjacent  notes 
in  the  musical  scale,  while  a  musician  can  distinguish  the  sixtieth 
part  of  a  semitone.  And  why  would  the  wondrous  harmonies  of 
a  Chopin  nocturne  seem  a  mere  chaos  of  sound  to  a  savage  ?  Be- 
cause his  ears  have  not  been  trained  through  his  imagination  and 
intellect  to  discriminate  sounds  and  sound -combinations,  or  to 
follow  the  plot  or  development  of  a  musical  narrative  or  "  theme." 

Just  so  with  the  sense  of  touch.  A  sweetheart's  veil  fluttering 
in  a  Hottentot's  face  would  only  annoy  him.  A  squeeze  of  the 
hand  would  leave  him  cold ;  and  would  he  refrain  from  putting 
his  arm  round  her  waist  if  that  gave  him  any  pleasure  ?  Obviously, 
then,  the  reason  why  the  art  of  kissing  is  unknown  to  him  is  be- 
cause his  senses  are  too  callous,  his  imagination  too  sluggish. 

Kissing,  like  every  other  fine  art,  has  its  sensuous  and  its 
imaginative  or  intellectual  side.  Of  all  parts  of  the  visible  body 
the  lips  are  the  most  sensitive  to  contact.  Here  the  layer  in 
which  the  nerves  and  blood-vessels  are  contained  is  not  covered 
over,  as  elsewhere  on  the  skin,  by  a  thick  leathery  epidermis,  but 
only  thinly  veiled  by  a  transparent  epithelium ;  so  that  when  lips 
are  applied  to  lips,  the  blood-vessels  which  carry  the  vital  fluid 
straight  from  the  two  loving  hearts,  and  the  soul-fibres,  called 
nerves,  are  brought  into  almost  immediate  contact :  whence  that 
interchange  of  soul-magnetism — that  electric  shock  which  makes 
the  first  mutual  kiss  of  Love  the  sweetest  moment  of  life — 

"What  words  can  ever  speak  affection 
So  thrilling  and  sincere  as  thine  ?" — BURNS. 

Yet  herein  the  imagination  plays  a  much  more  prominent  rftle 
than  it  appears  to  do  at  first  sight.  The  real  reason  why  a  savage 
cannot  enjoy  a  kiss  is  not  so  much  because  his  lips  are  deficient  in 
tactile  sensibility,  as  because  he  has  no  imagination  to  invest  labial 
contact  with  the  romance  of  individualised  passion.  If  a  lover's 
pleasure  lay  in  the  mere  labial  contact,  he  would  as  soon  exchange 
a  kiss  with  any  other  girl.  But  should  a  sweetheart,  on  being 
asked  for  a  kiss,  refer  him,  say,  to  his  sister  or  her  sister ;  though 


232  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

the  latter  be  a  hundred  times  more  beautiful,  he  would  chide  his 
love  for  offering  a  stone  where  bread  was  wanted.  His  imagina- 
tion has  so  long  painted  to  him  the  superior  ecstasy  of  a  kiss  from 
her  that,  when  he  finally  gets  it,  the  long-deferred  gratification 
ensures  the  unparalleled  rapture  anticipated. 

ANCIENT  KISSES 

As  the  ancient  civilised  nations  were  much  more  addicted  than 
we  are  to  gesture  language,  it  seems  natural  that  so  expressive  a 
sign  as  kissing  should  have  been  used  for  a  variety  of  purposes — 
for  indicating  not  only  family  affection,  sexual  passion  and  friend- 
ship, but  general  respect,  reverence,  humility,  condescension,  etc. 
Among  idolatrous  nations,  as  M'Clintock  and  Strong  remark,  "  it 
was  the  custom  to  throw  kisses  towards  the  images  of  the  gods, 
and  towards  the  sun  and  moon."  Kissing  the  hand  appears  to  be 
a  modern  custom,  but  many  other  parts  of  the  body  were  thus 
saluted  by  the  ancients  :  "  Kissing  the  feet  of  princes  was  a  token 
of  subjection  and  obedience,  which  was  sometimes  carried  so  far 
that  the  print  of  the  foot  received  the  kiss,  so  as  to  give  the  in> 
pression  that  the  very  dust  had  become  sacred  by  the  royal  tread, 
or  that  the  subject  was  not  worthy  to  salute  even  the  prince's 
foot,  but  was  content  to  kiss  the  earth  itself  near  or  on  which  he 
trod."  A  similar  observance  is  the  kissing  of  the  Pope's  toe,  or 
rather,  the  cross  on  his  slipper — a  custom  in  vogue  since  the  year 
710.  Among  the  Arabs  the  women  and  children  kiss  the  beards 
of  their  husbands  or  fathers.  Among  the  ancient  Hebrews,  "  kiss- 
ing the  lips  by  way  of  affectionate  salutation  was  not  only  per- 
mitted, but  customary  among  near  relatives  of  both  sexes,  both  in 
patriarchal  and  in  later  times."  The  kiss  on  the  cheek  "  has  at. 
all  times  been  customary  in  the  East,  and  can  hardly  be  said  to  be 
extinct  even  in  Europe." 

Among  the  ancient  Greeks,  Jealousy  prompted  the  husbands  to? 
-"make  their  wives  eat  onions  whenever  they  were  going  from 
home."  And  in  the  Roman  Republic,  "  Among  the  safeguards  of 
female  purity,"  says  Mr.  Lecky,  "was  an  enactment  forbidding 
women  even  to  taste  wine.  .  .  .  Cato  said  that  the  ancient  Romans 
were  accustomed  to  kiss  their  wives  for  the  purpose  of  discovering 
whether  they  had  been  drinking  wine." 

Breath-sweetening  cloves  and  cachous  were  evidently  unknown 
in  the  good  old  times. 

The  Romans  had  special  names  for  three  kinds  of  kisses — 
basium,  a  kiss  of  politeness ;  osculum,  between  friends ;  suavium, 


KISSING— PAST,  PRESENT,  AND  FUTURE  283 

between  lovers.  If  a  man  kissed  his  betrothed,  she  gained  thereby 
the  half  of  his  effects  in  the  event  of  his  dying  before  the  celebra- 
tion of  the  marriage ;  and  if  the  lady  herself  died,  under  the  same 
circumstances,  her  heirs  or  nearest  of  kin  took  the  half  due  to 
her,  a  kiss  among  the  ancients  being  a  sign  of  plighted  faith. 
So  seriously,  indeed,  was  a  kiss  regarded  by  the  ancient  Romans, 
that  a  husband  would  not  even  kiss  his  wife  in  presence  of  his 
daughters. 

It  was  on  account  of  this  strict  feeling  regarding  kisses  ex- 
changed by  man  and  woman  that  the  early  Christians  subjected 
themselves  to  fierce  attacks  and  slander,  because  of  the  kisses  that 
were  exchanged  as  a  symbol  of  religious  union  at  the  Love-Feasts 
of  the  first  disciples.  "But,  in  397,  the  Council  of  Carthage 
thought  fit  to  forbid  all  religious  kissing  between  the  sexes,  not- 
withstanding St  Paul's  exhortation,  'Greet  ye  one  another  with 
a  kiss  of  charity.1 " 

MEDIEVAL  KISSES 

Among  many  other  refinements  of  the  ancients,  the  mediaeval 
nations  lost  the  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  kissing  between  the 
sexes.  England  was  apparently  the  greatest  sinner  in  this  respect; 
for  it  appears  to  have  been  customary  on  visiting  to  kiss  the  host's 
wife  and  daughters.  Indeed,  up  to  a  comparatively  recent  time, 
kissing  on  every  occasion  was  almost  as  prevalent  and  permissible 
as  handshaking  is  at  the  present  day.  In  the  sixteenth  century 
it  was  customary  in  England  for  ladies  to  reward  their  partners 
in  the  dance  with  a  kiss ;  and  for  a  long  time  the  minister  who 
united  a  couple  in  the  holy  bonds  of  matrimony  had  the  privilege 
of  kissing  not  only  the  bride  but  even  the  bridesmaids!  No 
wonder  the  ministry  was  the  most  popular  profession  in  those 
days. 

"  It  is  quite  certain,"  says  a  writer  in  the  St.  James's  Magazine 
(1871),  "that  the  custom  of  kissing  was  brought  into  England 
from  Friesland,  as  St.  Pierius  Wensemius,  historiographer  to  their 
High  Mightinesses,  the  states  of  Friesland,  in  his  Chronicle,  1622, 
tells  us  that  the  pleasant  practice  of  kissing  was  utterly  ^in- 
practised  and  unknown  in  England  till  the  fair  Princess  Romix 
(Rowena),  the  daughter  of  King  Hengist  of  Friesland,  pressed  the 
beaker  with  her  lippens,  and  saluted  the  amorous  Vortigern  with 
a  kusjen '  (little  kiss)." 

Having  recovered  this  lost  art,  however,  the  English  lost  no 
time  in  making  up  for  neglected  opportunities.  Erasmus  writes 
in  one  of  his  epistles :  "If  you  go  to  any  place  (in  Britain)  you 


234  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

are  received  with  a  kiss  by  all ;  if  you  depart  on  a  journey,  you 
are  dismissed  with  a  kiss ;  you  return,  kisses  are  exchanged  .  .  . 
wherever  you  move,  nothing  but  kisses.  And  if  you,  Faustus,  had 
but  once  tasted  them, — how  soft  they  are,  how  fragrant !  on  my 
honour,  you  would  wish  not  to  reside  here  for  ten  years  only,  but 
for  life  ! !  1" 

Bunyan,  however,  frowned  on  this  practice,  and  inquired  most 
pertinently — and  impertinently — why  the  men  only  "salute  the 
most  handsome  and  let  the  ill-favoured  alone  1 " 

Pepys,  in  his  Diary  for  1660,  gives  this  account  of  some 
Portuguese  ladies  in  London :  "  I  find  nothing  in  them  that  is 
pleasing ;  and  I  see  they  have  learnt  to  kiss,  and  look  freely  up  and 
down  already,  and  I  do  believe  will  soon  forget  the  recluse  practice 
of  their  own  country." 

One  of  the  luckiest  of  mortals  was  Bulstrode  Whitelock,  who 
at  the  Court  of  Christine  of  Sweden  was  asked  to  teach  her  ladies 
"the  English  mode  of  salutation;  which,  after  some  pretty 
defences,  their  lips  obeyed,  and  Whitelock  most  readily  !  " 

The  following  extraordinary  kissing  story  is  told  in  Chambers^ 
Journal  for  1861 : — 

"  When  the  gallant  cardinal,  Count  of  Lorraine,  was  presented 
to  the  Duchess  of  Savoy,  she  gave  him  her  hand  to  kiss,  greatly 
to  the  indignation  of  the  irate  churchman.  'How,  madam e/ 
exclaimed  he,  '  am  I  to  be  treated  in  this  manner  ?  I  kiss  the 
queen,  my  mistress,  who  is  the  greatest  queen  in  the  world,  and 
shall  I  not  kiss  you,  a  dirty  little  duchess  ?  I  would  have  you 
know  I  have  kissed  as  handsome  ladies,  and  of  as  great  or  greater 
family  than  you.'  Without  more  ado  he  made  for  the  lips  of  the 
proud  Portuguese  princess,  and,  despite  her  resistance,  kissed  her 
thrice  on  her  mouth  before  he  released  her  with  an  exultant 
laugh." 

The  fashion  of  universal  kissing  appears  to  have  gone  out  about 
the  time  of  the  Restoration. 


MODERN   KISSES 

The  history  of  kissing,  thus  briefly  sketched,  shows  that  among 
primitive  men  this  art  is  unknown  because  they  are  incapable  of 
appreciating  it.  To  the  ancient  civilised  nations  its  charms  were 
revealed ;  but  as  usual  in  the  intoxication  of  a  new  discovery,  they 
hardly  knew  what  to  do  with  it,  and  applied  it  to  all  sorts  of 
stupid  ceremonial  purposes.  The  tendency  of  civilisation,  how- 
ever, has  been  to  eliminate  promiscuous  kissing,  and  restrict  it 


KISSING— PAST,  PRESENT,  AND  FUTURE  235 

more  and  more  to  its  proper  function  as  an  expression  of  the 
affections.  And  even  within  this  sphere  the  circle  becomes  gradu- 
ally smaller.  Although  in  some  parts  of  Europe  men  still  kiss 
one  another  as  a  token  of  relationship,  friendship,  or  esteem,  yet  the 
habit  is  slowly  dying  out,  the  example  having  been  set  in  England, 
where  it  was  abandoned  toward  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  senseless  custom  which  women  to-day  indulge  in  ofj 
kissing  each  other  on  the  slightest  provocation,  often  when  they  I 
would  rather  slap  one  another  in  the  face,  is  also  doomed  to  I 
extinction.  The  witticism  that  women  kiss  one  another  because 
they  cannot  find  anything  better  to  kiss,  differing  herein  from 
men,  was  not  perpetrated  by  a  woman.  The  practice  of  kissing 
little  children  has  been  often  enough  condemned  on  medical 
grounds,  which  also  hold  good  in  the  case  of  adults.  That  con- 
tagious diseases  are  thus  often  conveyed  from  one  person  to 
another  was  already  known  to  the  ancient  Romans,  one  of  whose 
emperors  issued  a  special  proclamation  in  consequence  against  pro- 
miscuous kissing. 

From  a  sentimental  point  of  view,  the  most  objectionable  of 
modern  kisses  are  those  which  are  allowed  between  cousins.  As 
long  as  a  man  may  become  a  suitor  for  the  hand  of  his  cousin  he 
should,  both  for  the  sake  of  his  own  love-drama  and  in  justice  to 
a  possible  rival,  be  debarred  from  this  privilege.  Imagine  the 
feelings  of  a  lover  who  knows  that  his  rival  has  been  permitted  to 
steal  the  virgin  kiss  froin  the  lips  of  his  adored  one  simply  because 
his  father  happens  to  be  her  uncle  !  Family  kisses  should,  there- 
fore, be  allowed  only  within  that  degree  of  relationship  which 
precludes  the  idea  of  Love  and  marriage.  Cousins  will  have  to  bo 
satisfied  in  future  with  a  warmer  grasp  of  the  hand  and  an  extra 
lump  of  sugar  in  a  maiden's  smile. 

LOVE-KISSES 

The  happiest  moment  in  the  life  of  the  happiest  man  is  that 
when  he  is  allowed  for  the  first  time  to  "  steal  immortal  blessing  " 
from  the  lips  of  her  who  has  just  promised  to  be  his  for  ever. 
No  wonder  the  poets  have  grown  eloquent  over  this  supreme 
moment  of  pre-heavenly  rapture — 

TENNYSON— 

O  love,  0  fire  !  once  he  drew 

With  one  long  kiss  my  whole  soul  through 

My  lips,  as  sunlight  drinketh  dew." 

MOORE — 

"  Grow  to  my  lips  thou  sacred  kiss." 


886  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUT* 

SHAKSPERE — 

"  As  if  he  plucked  .up  kisses  by  the  root 
That  grew  upon  my  lips." 

RUCKBBT — 

"  Meine  Liebste,  mit  den  from  men  treuen 
Braunen  Rehesaugen,  sagt,  sie  habe 
Blaue  einst  als  Kind  gehabt.     Ich  glaub'e* 
Neulich  da  ich,  seliges  Vergessen 
Trinkend  hing  an  ihren  Lippen, 
Meine  Augen  unterm  Ian  gen  Kusse 
Oeffnend,  sehaut*  ich  in  die  nahcn  ihren, 
Und  sie  kamen  mir  in  soldier  Niihe 
Tiefblau  wie  ein  Himmel  vor.     Was  ist  das 
Wer  gibt  dif  der  Kindheit  Augen  wieder  ? 
Deine  Liebe,  sprach  sie,  deine  Liebe, 
Die  mich  hat  zum  Kind  gemaclit,  die  alle 
Liebesunschuldstraume  meiner  Kindheit 
Hat  gereift  zu  sel'ger  Erfullung. 
Soil  der  Himmel  nicht,  der  mir  im  Herzen 
Steht  durch  dich,  mir  blau  durch's  Auge  blicken  I* 

Love-kisses  are  silent  like  deep  affection-—  c 

"Passions  are  likened  best  to  floods  and  streams : 
The  shallow  murmur,  but  the  deep  are  dumb." — RALEIGH. 

True,  Petruchio  kissed  Katrina  "  with  such  a  clamorous  smack, 
that  at  the  parting  all  the  church  did  echo  " ;  but  his  object  was 
not  to  express  his  Love,  but  to  tease  and  tame  the  shrew.  Loud 
kisses,  moreover,  might  betray  the  lovers  to  profane  ears,  and 
bring  on  a  fatal  attack  of  Coyness  on  the  girl's  part — 


1 


I" The  greatest  sin  'twixt  heaven  and  hell 
Is  first  to  kiss  and  then  to  tell." 


Love-kisses  are  passionate  and  long;  for  Love  is  Cupid's  lip- 
cement — 

"Oh,  a  kiss,  long  as  my  exile, 
Sweet  as  my  revenge." — SHAKSPERE. 

"A  long,  long  kiss,  a  kiss  of  youth  and  love." 

"  For  a  kiss's  strength 
I  think  it  must  be  measured  by  its  length." — BYEOW. 

"A  kiss  now  that  will  hang  upon  my  lip 
As  sweet  as  morning  dew  upon  a  rose, 
And  full  as  long." — THOMAS  MIDDLETON. 

Perhaps  the  longest  kiss  on  record  is  that  which  Siegfried  gives 
Brunnhilde  in  the  drama  of  Siegfried.  But  this  is  not  an  ordinary 
kiss,  for  the  hero  bag  to  wake  with  it  the  Valkyrie  from  the 


KISSING— PAST,  PRESENT,  AND  FUTURE  237 

twenty  years'  sleep  into  which  old  Wotan  had  plunged  her  for  dis- 
obeying his  orders.  Thanks  to  Wagner's  art,  the  thrill  of  this 
Love-kiss,  magically  transmuted  into  tones,  is  felt  by  a  thousand 
spectators  simultaneously  with  the  lover. 

Love-kisses  are  innumerable.  Thus  sings  the  Italian  poet, 
Cecco  Angiolieri,  in  the  thirteenth  century — 

"Because  the  stars  are  fewer  in  heaven's  span 
Than  all  those  kisses  wherewith  I  kept  time 
All  in  an  instant  (I  who  now  have  none  !) 
Upon  her  mouth  (I  and  no  other  man  !) 
So  sweetly  on  the  twentieth  day  of  June 
On  the  New  Year  twelve  hundred  ninety-one." 

ROSSETTI'S  TEANSL. 

Novelists  and  poets  have  exhausted  their  ingenuity  in  finding 
adjectives  descriptive  of  Love-kisses  and  others.  An  anonymous 
essayist  has  compiled  the  following  list : — 

^--^  Kisses  are  forced,  unwilling,  cold,  comfortless,  frigid,  ana 
frozen,  chaste,  timid,  rosy,  balmy,  humid,  dewy,  trembling,  soft, 
gentle,  tender,  tempting,  fragrant,  sacred,  hallowed,  divine,  sooth- 
ing, joyful,  affectionate,  delicious,  rapturous,  deep-drawn,  impressive, 
quick,  and  nervous,  warm,  burning,  impassioned,  inebriating, 
ardent,  flaming,  and  akin  to  fire,  ravishing,  lingering,  long.  One 
also  hears  of  parting,  tear-dewed,  savoury,  loathsome,  poisonous, 
treacherous,  false,  rude,  stolen,  and  great  fat,  noisy  kisses." 

HOW  TO   KISS 

Kissing  comes  by  instinct,  and  yet  it  is  an  art  which  few  under- 
stand properly.  A  lover  should  not  hold  his  bride  by  the  ears  in 
kissing  her,  as  appears  to  have  been  customary  at  Scotch  weddings 
of  the  last  century.  A  more  graceful  way,  and  quite  as  effective 
in  preventing  the  bride  from  "getting  away,"  is  to  put  your  right 
arm  round  her  neck,  your  fingers  under  her  chin,  raise  the  chin, 
and  then  gently  but  firmly  press  your  lips  on  hers.  After  a  few 
repetitions  she  will  find  out  it  doesn't  hurt,  and  become  as  gentle 
as  a  lamb. 

The  word  adoration  is  derived  from  kissing.  It  means  literally 
to  apply  to  the  mouth.  Therefore  girls  should  beware  of  philolo- 
gists who  may  ask  them  with  seemingly  harmless  intent,  "  May  I 
adore  you  1 " 

In  kissing,  as  in  everything  else,  honesty  is  the  best  policy. 
Stolen  kisses  are  not  the  sweetest,  as  Leigh  Hunt  would  have  us 
believe.  A  kiss  to  be  a  kiss  must  be  mutual,  voluntary,  siinul- 


238  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

taneous.     "  The  kiss  snatched  hasty  from  the  sidelong  maid  "  is 
not  worth  having.     A  stolen  kiss  is  only  half  a  kiss. 

"  These  poor  half- kisses  kill  me  quite ; 
Was  ever  man  thus  served  ? 
Amidst  an  ocean  of  delight, 
For  pleasure  to  be  starved  I " — MAKLOWB. 


HOW  TO  WIN  LOYE 

BRASS  BUTTONS 

Inasmuch  as  language  is  the  least  eloquent  and  effective  mode 
of  expressing  Love,  and  inasmuch  as  Love  is  commonly  inspired  in 
woman  by  the  possession  of  qualities  which  she  lacks,  it  is  obvious 
that  Shakspere  did  not  show  his  usual  insight  into  human  nature 
when  he  wrote — 

"  That  man  that  hath  a  tongue  is,  I  say,  no  man, 
If  with  his  tongue  he  cannot  win  a  woman." 

It  seems,  indeed,  quite   probable  that   Bacon  wrote  those  two 
lines ;  if  Shakspere  had  written  them  he  would  have  said — 

"That  man  that  hath  a  uniform  is,  I  say,  no  man, 
If  with  his  uniform  he  cannot  win  a  woman." 

The  extraordinary  infatuation  for  military  uniforms  shown  by 
women  of  all  times  and  countries  is  one  of  the  most  obscure 
problems  in  mental  and  social  philosophy.  Whenever  an  officer, 
though  ever  so  humble  in  rank,  is  present  at  a  ball  or  other  social 
gathering,  all  other  men,  be  they  merchants,  politicians,  lawyers, 
physicians,  artists,  students,  ministers,  are  simply  "  nowhere." 

What  is  the  cause  of  this  singular  infatuation?  Is  it  the 
colour-harmony  formed  by  the  complementary  blue  cloth  and 
yellow  buttons?  No,  for  various  officials,  as  well  as  messenger 
boys,  wear  similar  uniforms  without  making  any  special  impression 
on  the  feminine  heart.  Is  it  the  beauty  or  the  wit  of  the  soldier  1 
No,  for  he  may  be  as  stupid  as  a  log,  and  red-nosed  and  smallpox- 
pitted,  without  losing  a  jot  of  his  popularity.  Nor  can  it  be  his 
valour,  for  he  has  perhaps  never  yet  been  opposite  the  "  business 
end "  of  a  rifle,  as  they  say  out  West.  Nor,  again,  is  it  likely 
that  women  admire  soldiers  from  an  inherited  sense  of  gratitude 
for  the  services  they  rendered  in  former  warlike  times  in  protecting 
their  great-great-grandmothers  from  the  enemy's  barbarity;  for 
woman's  gratitude  is  not  apt  to  be  so  very  retrospective,  while 
gratitude  itself  is  less  apt  to  inspire  Love  than  aversion. 


HOW  TO  WIN  LOVE  239 

Whatever  may  be  the  cause  of  this  mysterious  phenomenon, 
the  fact  remains  that  officers  are  woman's  ideals.  Hence  the  first 
and  most  important  hint  to  those  who  would  win  a  woman's  Love 
is :  Put  brass  buttons  on  your  coat,  have  it  dyed  blue,  and  wear 
epaulettes  and  a{  waxed  moustache.  This  love-charm  has  never 
been  known  to  fail. 

CONFIDENCE  AND   BOLDNESS 

Women  secretly  detest  bashful  men.  It  is  their  own  duty, 
prescribed  by  etiquette,  to  be  passive,  shy,  and  diffident;  hence  if 
men  were  shy  and  diffident  too,  no  advances  would  be  made,  and 
all  progress  in  Love-making  would  be  retarded. 

Women  love  courage.  He  who  robs  lions  of  their  hearts  can 
easily  win  a  woman's. 

"  Our  doubts  are  traitors, 
And  make  us  lose  the  good  we  oft  might  win 
By  fearing  to  attempt," 

says  Shakspere ;  and  Chesterfield  remarks  ct  propos,  that  "  that 
silly  sanguine  notion  which  is  firmly  entertained  here,  that  one 
Englishman  can  beat  three  Frenchmen,  encourages  and  has  some- 
times enabled  one  Englishman  in  reality  to  beat  two." 

Ovid  knew  the  value  of  boldness.  And  although  his  object 
was  not  to  teach  how  to  win  permanent  Love,  but  how  to  get 
honey  without  taking  care  of  the  bees,  yet  his  psychology  is 
correct,  and  agrees  with  Goethe's  aphorism  that  "if  thou  ap- 
proachest  women  with  tenderness  thou  winnest  them  with  a  word  ; 
but  he  who  is  bold  and  saucy  comes  off  better." 

Perhaps  this  is  one  reason  why  officers  are  so  successful  in 
Love,  for  several  of  them  have  been  known  to  be  bold  and  saucy. 

Another  reason  may  be  that  their  pursuit  is  more  distinctively 
and  exclusively  masculine  than  any  other  profession. 

What,  for  instance,  could  be  more  delightfully  masculine,  i.e. 
mediaeval,  than  the  way  in  which,  according  to  the  Chronicon 
Turonense,  William  the  Conqueror  wooed  and  won  Mathilde,  the 
daughter  of  Count  Baldwin,  Prince  of  Flanders.  At  first  he  was 
unsuccessful,  "for  the  young  girl,"  says  Professor  Seherr,  "de- 
clared proudly  she  would  not  marry  a  bastard.  Then  William 
rode  to  Bruges,  waylaid  Mathilde,  attacked  her  when  she  came 
from  church,  pulled  her  long  hair,  and  maltreated  her  with  his 
fists  and  with  kicks,  after  which  heroic  performance  he  made  his 
escape.  Strange  to  say,  this  peculiar  mode  of  Love-making 
imposed  so  greatly  on  the  beauty  that  she  declared  with  tears  in 


240  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

her  eyes  that  she  would  marry  no  one  but  the  Norman  Duke, 
whom  she  actually  did  marry.  A  parallel  case  may  be  found  in 
the  German  Nibelungenlied  (str.  870  and  901)." 

Since,  according  to  the  old  philosophy,  human  nature,  including 
Love  and  Love-making,  is  the  same  at  all  times  and  in  all 
countries,  it  follows  that  a  modern  lover,  after  donning  his  brass 
buttons,  should  administer  his  sweetheart  a  sound  thrashing. 
That  will  make  her  mellow  and  docile. 


PLEASANT   ASSOCIATIONS 

The  Germans,  it  is  well  known,  are  deficient  in  Gallantry,  at 
least  in  conjugal  life,  and  often  treat  their  wives  more  as  upper 
servants  than  as  companions.  Perhaps  it  was  the  unconscious 
desire  to  justify  this  conjugal  attitude  that  induced  one  of  the 
leading  German  psychologists,  Horwicz,  to  pen  these  lines  : — 

"  Love  can  only  be  excited  by  strong  and  vivid  emotions,  and 
it  is  almost  immaterial  whether  these  emotions  are  agreeable  or 
disagreeable.  The  Cid  wooed  the  proud  heart  of  Donna  Ximene, 
whose  father  he  had  slain,  by  shooting  one  after  another  of  her' 
pet  pigeons.  Such  persons  as  arouse  in  us  only  weak  emotions, 
or  none  at  all,  are  obviously  least  likely  to  incline  us  toward 
them.  .  .  .  Our  aversion  is  most  apt  to  be  bestowed  on  individuals 
who,  as  the  phrase  goes,  are  '  neither  warm  nor  cold ' }  whereas 
impulsive,  choleric  people,  though  they  may  readily  offend  us,  are 
just  as  capable  of  making  us  warmly  attached  to  them." 

How  that  modern  genius,  who  lived  two  thousand  years  ago 
and  called  himself  Ovid,  would  have  opened  his  eyes  in  wonder  at 
this  German-mediseval  Art  of  Love !  He,  queer  fellow,  believed 
that  a  lover  should  never  be  otherwise  than  pleasantly  associated 
in  his  sweetheart's  mind.  If  she  is  spoiled  by  over-indulgence, 
do  not,  he  says  in  efiect,  take  away  her  dainties  with  your  own 
hand.  If  she  is  unwell,  do  not  hand  her  the  bitter  medicine  in 
person  :  "  Let  your  rival  mix  the  cup  for  her." 

So  long  as  the  professional  manslayer  is  the  highest  ideal  of 
woman's  tender  heart,  lovers  will  do  well  to  follow  mediaeval 
methods  of  Courtship  and  make  themselves  as  disagreeable  as 
possible.  When  the  millennium  arrives,  and  wholesale  duels  to 
avenge  offended  national  "honour"  will,  like  private  duels  to 
avenge  individual  "honour,"  have  become  obsolete,  then  the 
Ovidian  psychology  of  Love  will  begin  to  prevail.  Then  will 
the  lover  endeavour  to  avoid  all  harshness  and  to  be  only  agree- 
ably associated  ia  the  mind  of  his  goddess — through  bright, 


HOW  TO  WItf  LOVE  241 

cheerful  conversation,  harmless  and  sincere  compliments,  mutual 
enjoyment  of  excursions  and  artistic  entertainments,  the  avoidance 
of  disagreeable  topics,  of  jealous  suspicions  and  reproaches,  etc. ; 
hoping  thus  to  become  the  nucleus  around  which  her  dreams  of 
matrimonial  happiness  will  gradually  crystallise. 


PERSEVERANCE 

Persistence  alone  may  win  a  woman  where  all  other  means  fail. 
She  may  dream  of  an  ideal  lover  and  vainly  wait  for  his  appear- 
ance for  several  years ;  and  in  the  meantime  the  image  of  her 
ever-present  suitor  will  become  brighter  and  more  inviting  in  her 
mind.  For  is  not  perseverance,  is  not  unflagging  devotion  to  a 
single  aim,  one  of  the  noblest  of  manly  attributes,  a  guarantee  of 
success  in  life  and  the  highest  test  of  genuine  passion  ? 

Perseverance  may  neutralise  more  than  one  refusal. 

"  Have  you  not  heard  it  said  full  oft 
A  woman's  nay  doth  stand  for  naught  I " 

asks  Shakspere ;  and  Byron  teaches  that  she 

"Who  listens  once  will  listen  twice* 
Her  heart,  be  sure,  is  not  of  ice, 
And  one  refusal  no  rebuff." 

The  fact  that  a  proposal  is  the  sincerest  compliment  a  man  can 
pay  a  woman,  contributes  not  a  little  to  make  a  second  proposal 
more  acceptable.  'A  third  should  rarely  be  attempted.  The  first 
proposal  may  have  been  refused  more  from  momentary  embarrass- 
ment than  from  real  indifference.  The  second,  being  weighted  by 
reflection,  is  generally  final,  though  numerous  exceptions  have 
occurred ;  yet  in  such  cases  it  is  probable  that  the  woman  gives 
her  hand  without  her  heart,  having  at  last  discovered  that  her 
heart  is  impervious  to  all  Love.  There  are  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  such  women,  and  some  of  them  are  very  sweet  and  pretty.  The 
fault  lies  in  their  shallow  education. 


FEIGNED   INDIFFERENCE 

Of  every  ten  disappointed  lovers  seven  might  say:  Had  I  been 
a  less  submissive  slave,  I  might  have  been  a  more  successful  suitor. 

"  It  is  a  rule  of  manners,"  says  Emerson,  "  to  avoid  exaggera- 
tion. .  .  In  man  or  woman  the  face  and  the  person  lose  power 
when  they  are  on  the  strain  to  express  admiration." 

R 


242  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

In  other  words,  one  of  the  ways  of  winning  Love  is  through 
stolidity  and  indifference,  real  or  feigned. 

Were  women  the  paragons  of  subtle  insight  they  are  painted, 
they  would  favour  those  who  are  most  visibly  affected  by  their 
charms,  as  being  best  able  to  appreciate  and  cherish  them.  There 
are  such  women — a  few ;  but  the  majority  are  partial  coquettes, 
to  whom  Love  is  known  only  as  a  form  of  Vanity,  who  neglect  a 
man  already  won,  and  reserve  their  sweetest  smiles  for  those  that 
seem  less  submissive.  The  artificial  dignity  under  which  so  many 
young  society  men  hide  their  mental  vacuity  has  an  irresistible 
fascination  for  the  average  society  girl  And  the  high  collar, ! 
/which  helps  to  keep  the  head  in  a  dignified  position,  unswerved/ 
Noy  emotion,  is  responsible  for  innumerable  conquests. 

Ergo,  to  win  a  society  girl's  heart,  wear  a  high  collar,  appear 
awfully  dignified  and  stolid,  and  show  not  the  slightest  interest  in 
anything.  Above  all,  if  you  are  of  superior  intelligence,  carefully 
conceal  the  fact.  Brains  are  not  "good  form"  in  society;  for 
what's  the  use  of  having  flint  where  there  is  no  steel  to  strike  a 
spark  1  "  Stolidity,"  says  Schopenhauer,  "  does  not  injure  a  man 
in  a  woman's  eye :  rather  will  mental  superiority,  and  still  more 
genius,  as  something  abnormal,  have  an  unfavourable  influence." 

A  passage  from  Diderot's  Paradox  of  Acting  (Pollock's  transla- 
tion) may  be  cited  in  illustration  of  Schopenhauer's  remark. 

"Take  two  lovers,  both  of  whom  have  their  declarations  to 
make.  Who  will  come  out  of  it  best  ?  Not  I,  I  promise  you. 
I  remember  that  I  approached  the  beloved  object  with  fear  and 
trembling;  my  heart  beat,  my  ideas  grew  confused,  my  voice 
failed  me,  I  mangled  all  I  said;  I  cried  yes  for  no;  I  made  a 
thousand  blunders ;  I  was  illimitably  inept ;  I  was  absurd  from 
top  to  toe,  and  the  more  I  saw  it  the  more  absurd  I  became. 
Meanwhile,  under  my  very  eyes,  a  gay  rival,  light-hearted  and 
agreeable,  master  of  himself,  pleased  with  himself,  losing  no 
opportunity  for  the  finest  flattery,  made  himself  entertaining  and 
agreeable,  enjoyed  himself;  he  implored  the  touch  of  a  hand 
which  was  at  once  given  him,  he  sometimes  caught  it  without 
asking  leave,  he  kissed  it  once  and  again.  I  the  while,  alone  in 
a  corner,  avoided  a  sight  which  irritated  me,  stifling  my  sighs, 
cracking  uiy  fingers  with  grasping  my  wrists,  plunged  in  melan- 
choly, covered  with  a  cold  sweat,  I  could  neither  show  nor  conceal 
my  vexation.  People  say  of  love  that  it  robs  witty  men  of  their 
wit,  and  gives  it  to  those  who  had  none  before :  in  other  words, 
makes  some  people  sensitive  and  stupid,  others  cold  and  adven- 
turous." 


HOW  TO  WIN  LOVE  243 

Another  specialist  in  Love-lore,  Lord  Byron,  discourses  on  this 
text  in  five  pithy  lines — 

"  Not  much  he  kens,  I  ween,  of  woman's  breast 
Who  thinks  that  wanton  thing  is  won  by  sighs, 
Do  proper  homage  to  thine  idol's  eyes, 
But  not  too  humbly  or  she  will  despise  ; 
Disguise  even  tenderness,  if  thou  art  wise." 

And  even  the  king  of  German  metaphysicians,  old  Kant,  under- 
stood this  feminine  foible,  which  may  have  been  the  reason  why 
he  never  found  a  wife  :  " An  actor,"  he  says,  "who  remains  un- 
moved, but  possesses  a  powerful  intellect  and  imagination,  may 
succeed  in  producing  a  deeper  impression  by  his  feigned  emotion' 
than  he  could  by  real  emotion.  One  who  is  truly  in  love  is,  in 
presence  of  his  beloved,  confused,  awkward,  and  anything  but 
fascinating.  But  a  clever  man  who  merely  plays  the  r6le  of  a 
lover  may  do  it  so  naturally  as  to  easily  ensnare  his  poor  victim  ; 
simply  because,  his  heart  being  unmoved,  his  head  remains  clear, 
and  he  can,  therefore,  make  the  most  of  his  wits  and  his  cleverness 
in  presenting  the  counterfeit  of  a  lover." 

"  The  counterfeit  of  a  lover."  It  is  he,  then,  whom  women, 
according  to  these  French,  English,  and  German  witnesses,  en- 
courage, instead  of  the  true  lover.  So  that  women  are  not  only 
less  capable  of  deep  Love  than  men,  but  they  do  not  even  promote 
the  growth  and  survival  of  Love  by  favouring  the  men  most  deeply 
affected  by  it.  And  the  fault,  be  it  said  once  more,  lies  in  the 
superficial  education  not  only  of  their  intellect  but  of  their  emo- 
tions, for  the  heart  can  only  be  reached  and  refined  through  the 
brain.  Th.e  average,  woman,  being  incapable  of  feeling  Love,  is 
incapable  of  appreciating  it  when  she  finds  it  in  a  man.  7  She  sees 
only  its  ridiculous  side — and  ridicule  is  fatal,  even  to  Love.  Ridi- 
cule killed  Love  in  France,  which  to-day  is  the  most  loveless 
country  in  the  civilised  world,  its  women  the  most  frivolous  and 
heartless, — and  its  population  gradually  diminishing. 

The  ridiculous  exaggerations  of  a  lover  are  indeed  harmless  if 
the  girl  is  in  love  too,  for  then  she  does  not  see  them ;  but  to  one 
who  has  yet  to  win  Love,  as  girls  are  now  constituted,  they  are 
fatal.  Perhaps  this  is  the  reason  why  the  list  of  men  of  genius 
who  failed  in  their  truest  Love  is  so  extraordinarily  large :  for, 
their  Love  being  more  ardent  than  that  of  others,  they  were  unable 
to  restrain  its  excesses  and  feign  indifference ;  while  another  way 
in  which  they  "lost  power"  was  through  their  extravagant  ad- 
miration of  Beauty,  which  put  their  faces  "  on  the  strain "  to 
express  it 


244  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

However  this  may  be,  lovers  should  keep  in  mind  this  para- 
doxical rule,  which  follows  as  a  corollary  from  the  foregoing  dis- 
cussion : 

In  order  to  win  a  .woman,  first  cure  yourself  of  your  passion, 
then,  having  won  her  through  feigned  indifference  (which  is  easy), 
fall  in  love  again  and  bag  her  before  she  has  had  time  to  discover 
your  change  of  feeling. 

The  only  difficulty  herein  lies  in  the  cure.  Should  this  be 
found  impossible,  even  with  the  aid  of  our  next  chapter,  one  last 
resource  is  open  to  the  lover.  Says  La  Bruyere  :  "  Quand  Ton  a 
assez  fait  aupres  d'une  femme  pour  devoir  1'engager,  il  y  a  encore 
une  ressource,  qui  est  de  ne  plus  rien  faire ;  c'est  alors  qu'elle  vous 
rappelle."  In  other  words,  if  you  have  failed  to  win  her  love,  with 
all  your  attentions,  change  your  policy:  leave  her  alone,  and  she 
will  be  sure  to  recall  you. 

This  trait  is  not  simply  the  outcome  of  feminine  perverseness 
or  coquetry.  The  explanation  lies  deeper.  Every  sensible  woman, 
be  she  ever  so  vain  and  accustomed  to  flattery,  is  painfully  con- 
scious of  certain  defects,  physical  or  mental.  "  Has  he  discovered 
them  1 "  she  will  anxiously  ask  herself  when  the  sly  lover  suddenly 
withdraws ;  "  I  must  recover  his  good  opinion."  So  she  sets  her- 
self the  task  of  fascinating  and  pleasing  him ;  and  this  desire  to 
please  (Gallantry)  being  one  of  the  constituent  parts  of  Love,  it 
is  apt  to  be  soon  joined  by  the  other  symptoms  which  make  up 
the  romantic  passion. 

COMPLIMENTS 

"0  flatter  me,  for  love  delights  in  praises," 
exclaims  one  of  Shakspere's  characters  ;  and  again — 

"  Flatter  and  praise,  commend,  extol  their  graces  ; 
Tho'  ne'er  so  black,  say  they  have  angels'  faces." 

There  is  one  advantage  in  writing  about  the  romantic  passion, 
Love  is  such  a  tissue  of  paradoxes,  and  exists  in  such  an  endless 
variety  of  forms  and  shades  that  you  may  say  almost  anything 
about  it  you  please,  and  it  is  likely  to  be  correct.  So  again  here. 
It  is  true,  no  doubt,  that  skill  in  the  art  of  flattery  helps  a  man 
to  win  a  woman's  goodwill,  but  how  does  this  rhyme  with  the 
doctrine  that  Feigned  Indifference  is  the  lover's  sharpest  weapon  ? 

Answer  :  A  compliment  is  not  so  much  an  expression  of  Love 
as  of  simple  aesthetic  admiration  ;  or  else  it  may  spring  from  the 
flatterer's  desire  to  show  off  his  wit.  A  man  may  compliment  a 
woman  for  whom  he  does  not  feel  the  slightest  Love ;  and  women 


HOW  TO  WIN  LOVE  245 

know  it.  Therefore  even  a  coquette  does  not  despise  and  ignore 
a  man  who  flatters  her,  as  she  invariably  does  one  whose  actions 
brand  him  as  her  captive  and  slave. 

At  the  same  time,  since  the  desire  to  be  considered  beautiful 
is  the  strongest  passion  in  a  woman's  heart,  the  avenue  to  that 
heart  may  often  be  found  by  a  man  who  can  convince  her  honestly 
that  she  is  considered  beautiful  by  himself  and  others.  For,  as 
every  man  of  ability  has  moments  when  he  doubts  his  genius,  so 
every  woman  has  moments  when  she  doubts  her  beauty  and  longs 
to  see  it  in  the  mirror  of  a  masculine  eye. 

The  most  common  mistake  of  lovers  is  to  compliment  a  woman 
on  her  most  conspicuous  points  of  beauty.  This  has  very  much 
the  same  effect  on  her  as  telling  Rubinstein  he  is  a  wonderful 
pianist.  He  knows  that  better  than  you  do,  and  has  been  told  so 
so  many  million  times  that  he  is  sick  and  tired  of  hearing  it  again. 
But  show  him  that  you  have  discovered  some  special  subtle  detail 
of  excellence  in  his  performance  or  compositions  that  had  escaped 
general  notice,  and  his  heart  is  yours  at  once  and  for  ever.  A 
lover  can  have  no  difficulty  in  discovering  such  subtle  charms  in 
his  sweetheart,  for  Cupid,  while  blinding  him  to  her  defects,  places 
her  beauties  under  a  microscope. 

A  inan  who  attends  a  social  gathering  comes  home  pleased, 
not  at  having  heard  a  number  of  bright  things,  but  in  proportion 
to  his  own  success  in  amusing  the  company.  On  the  same  prin- 
ciple, if  you  give  a  girl — especially  one  who  mistrusts  her  conversa- 
tional ability — a  chance  to  say  a  single  bright  thing,  she  will  love 
you  more  than  if  you  said  a  hundred  clever  things  to  her. 

Sincerity  in  compliments  is  essential ;  else  all  is  lost.  It  is 
'useless  to  try  to  convince  a  woman  with  an  ugly  mouth  or  nose 
that  those  features  are  not  ugly.  She  knows  they  are  ugly,  as 
well  as  Rubinstein  knows  when  he  strikes  a  wrong  note.  "  Very 
ugly  or  very  beautiful  women,"  says  Chesterfield,  "should  be 
flattered  on  their  understanding,  and  mediocre  ones  on  their 
beauty." 

A  clever  joke  is  never  out  of  place.  You  may  intimate  to  a 
comparatively  plain  woman  that  she  is  good-looking,  and  if  she 
retorts  with  a  sceptical  answer,  you  may  snub  her  and  score  ten 
points  in  Love  by  telling  her  you  pity  her  poor  taste. 

Indeed,  the  art  of  successful  flattery,  especially  with  modern 
self-conscious  girls,  consists  in  the  ability  of  giving  "  a  heartfelt 
compliment  in  the  disguise  of  playful  raillery,"  as  Coleridge  puts 
it.  Conundrums  are  very  useful.  For  instance,  Angelina  is 
patting  a  dog.  "  Do  you  know  why  all  dogs  are  BO  fond  of  you  ?" 


246  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

asks  Adolphus.  Angelina  gives  it  up.  "Because  dogs  are  the 
most  intelligent  of  all  animals."  Angelina  goes  to  Paris,  and 
Adolphus  enjoys  his  last  walk  with  her.  They  pass  a  weeping 
willow.  "Why  are  we  two  like  this  tree  ?"  She  gives  it  up  again. 
"  A  weeping  willow  is  graceful  and  melancholy ;  you  are  grace- 
ful, I  melancholy." 

"How  old  am  I?"  asks  Angelina.  "I  don't  know.  Judging 
by  your  conversation  thirty-five,  by  your  looks  nineteen." 

Tell  a  woman  —  casually,  as  it  were — of  the  effect  of  her 
charms  on  a  third  party,  and  it  will  please  her  more  than  a  bushel 
of  your  neatest  compliments.  As  Lessing  remarks,  Homer  gives 
us  a  more  vivid  sense  of  Helen's  beauty  by  noting  its  effect  even 
on  the  Trojan  elders,  than  he  could  have  done  by  the  most  minute 
enumeration  of  her  charms.  Put  your  flatteries  into  actions  rather 
than  words — "  mettre  la  flatterie  dans  les  actions  et  non  en  paroles  " 
— is  Balzac's  advice.  But  "  flattery  in  actions  "  is  simply  another 
name  for  Gallantry. 

There  is  no  danger  that  the  subtlest  compliment  will  ever 
escape  notice.  In  the  discovery  of  praise  the  commonest  mind  has 
the  quickness  of  genius. 

LOVE-LETTERS 

The  great  trouble  with  compliments  is  that  they  have  an  an- 
noying habit  of  occurring  to  the  mind  about  ten  or  twenty  minutes 
after  the  natural  opportunity  for  getting  them  off  has  passed 
away.  It  is  here  that  Love-letters  come  to  the  rescue.  They 
enable  a  man  to  excogitate  the  most  excruciatingly  subtle  and 
hyperbolic  compliments,  and  then  "lead  up  to  them"  most 
naturally. 

There  is  an  old  superstition  that  Love-letters  must  be  inco- 
herent trash  to  be  genuine  evidences  of  passion.  When  Keats's 
Love-letters  to  Fanny  Brawne  were  sold  at  auction,  a  spicy  jour- 
nalist commented  as  follows  on  the  occasion  : — 

"It  is  open  to  question  whether,  like  so  many  of  the  letter- 
writers  of  the  age  of  which  Keats  inherited  the  traditions,  tho 
singer  of  Endymion  had  not  a  shrewd  eye  to  posterity  when  he 
wrote  the  laboured  compositions  which  the  world  regards  as  the 
record  of  his  wooing.  The  manuscript  is  painfully  correct,  the 
punctuation  worthy  of  a  printer's  reader,  the  capitals  much  nicer 
than  fiery  lovers  usually  form,  and  the  periods  rounded  with  pain- 
ful care.  Like  so  many  cultivators  of  the  art  of  letter-writing, 
the  sensitive  poet,  'who  was  snuffed  out  by  a  review,'  seems  to 


HOW  TO  WIN  LOVE  247 

have  copied  the  gush,  which  last  week  sold  for  ten  times  more 
than  Endymion  fetched,  before  he  committed  it  to  the  fourpenny 
post.  Hence  the  veriest  scrawl,  the  most  illegible  postcard  of 
these  times  is,  as  an  index  to  the  writer's  character,  infinitely  more 
valuable  than  the  ponderous  pieces  of  rhetoric  which  last  century 
passed  for  love-making  between  Strephon,  who  quotes  the  elegant 
Tully,  and  Chloe,  who  makes  free  use  of  the  *  Elegant  Extracts.' 
Duller  fustian  than  such  priggish  love-letters  it  is  hard  to  conceive. 
They  remind  one  of  nothing  so  much  as  the  epistles  copied  out  of 
The  Complete  Letter-  Writer,  and  must  recall  to  some  middle-aged 
men  certain  painful  experiences  of  those  salad  days  when  their 
young  affections  suffered  a  sudden  blight  by  missives  of  so  severely 
correct  an  order  that  they  suggest  the  idea  of  having  undergone 
maternal  supervision." 

Yet  why,  pray,  should  Keats  not  have  written  his  Love-letters 
so  carefully  and  copied  them  so  neatly  ?  Is  it  not  a  fact  that 
when  a  man  is  in  love  he  cares  more  to  make  a  pleasing  impression 
on  one  particular  person  than  on  all  the  rest  of  the  world  com- 
bined ?  and  that  even  his  ambition  and  fame,  for  which  he  labours 
so  hard,  seem  valuable  in  his  eyes  solely  as  a  means  of  winning 
Her  Love  1  And  if  Love  is  a  deeper  passion,  even  in  a  poet,  than 
ambition,  why  should  he  not  go  to  the  extent  even  of  taking  notes 
and  utilising  his  very  best  conceits  in  his  Love-letters  ?  The 
truth  is,  in  the  writing  of  Love-letters  everything  depends  on 
the  man's  habits.  If  he  is  accustomed  to  writing  carelessly,  his 
Love-letters  will  probably  _be  hasty  and  slovenly  enough  to  suit 
orthodox  notions  on  this  subject.  But  if  he  is  a  literary  artist, 
he  will  probably  polish  his  billets-doux  more  than  anything  else 
con  amore,  considering  the  probable  effect  on  her  mind  of  every 
sentence.  And  although  the  thought  of  future  publication  may 
enter  his  mind,  it  will  appear  as  the  veriest  trifle  compared  with 
the  more  important  object  of  winning  a  woman's  Love  by  a 
display  of  complimentary  wit  and  passionate  protestations  of  un- 
dying affection. 

Sir  Richard  Steele  evidently  did  not  believe  that  Love-letters, 
to  be  genuine,  must  be  slovenly.  In  one  of  his  letters  to  Miss 
Scurlock  he  apologises  for  not  having  time  to  revise  what  he  had 
written.  In  another  letter  he  exclaims  :  "  How  art  thou,  oh  my 
soul,  stolen  from  thyself !  how  is  all  my  attention  broken !  my 
books  are  blank  paper,  and  my  friends  intruders."  Again :  "It 
is  the  hardest  thing  in  the  world  to  be  in  love,  and  yet  attend 
business.  As  for  me,  all  that  speak  to  find  me  out,  and  I  must 
lock  myself  up,  or  other  people  will  do  it  for  me.  A  gentleman 


248  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

asked  me  this  morning,  '  What  news  from  Holland  ? '  and  I 
answered,  { She  is  exquisitely  handsome.'  Another  desired  to 
know  when  I  had  been  last  at  Windsor ;  I  replied,  '  She  designs 
to  go  with  me.' "  And  once  more  :  "  It  is  to  my  lovely  charmer  I 
owe  that  many  noble  ideas  are  continually  affixed  to  my  words  and 
actions  :  it  is  the  natural  effect  of  that  generous  passion  to  create 
in  the  admirers  some  similitude  of  the  object  admired  ;  thus,  my 
dear,  am  I  every  day  to  improve  from  so  sweet  a  companion." 

The  first  score  or  so  of  Keats's  Love-letters  have  the  ring  of 
true  gold.  Here  are  a  few  specimens  in  which  the  thermometer 
of  endearments  rises  steadily  from  My  Dearest  Lady,  through  My 
Sweet  Girl,  My  Dear  Girl,  My  Dearest  Girl,  My  Sweet  Fanny, 
to  My  Sweet  Love,  Dearest  Love  and  Sweetest  Fanny.  In  the 
very  first  letter  he  writes  : — 

"  Ask  yourself,  my  love,  whether  you  are  not  very  cruel  to 
have  so  entrammelled  me,  so  destroyed  my  freedom.  Will  you 
confess  this  in  the  letter  you  must  write  immediately  ?  and  do  all 
you  can  to  console  me  in  it — make  it  rich  as  a  draught  of  poppies 
to  intoxicate  me — write  the  softest  words  and  kiss  them,  that  I 
may  at  least  touch  my  lips  where  yours  have  been.  For  myself,' 
if  I  do  not  know  how  to  express  my  devotion  to  so  fair  a  form,  I 
want  a  brighter  word  than  bright,  a  fairer  word  than  fair.  I 
almost  wish  we  were  butterflies,  and  lived  but  three  summer  days 
— three  such  days  with  you  I  could  fill  with  more  delight  than 
fifty  common  years  could  ever  contain." 

"  All  I  can  bring  you  is  a  swooning  admiration  of  your 
beauty." 

"  I  have  two  luxuries  to  brood  over  in  my  walks — your  loveli- 
ness and  the  hour  of  my  death.  0  that  I  could  have  possession 
of  them  both  in  the  same  minute." 

"  I  hate  the  world  :  it  batters  too  much  the  wings  of  my  self- 
will,  and  would  I  could  take  a  sweet  poison  from  your  lips  to  send 
me  out  of  it.  From  no  others  would  I  take  it." 

"  At  Winchester  I  shall  get  your  letters  more  readily ;  and  it 
being  a  cathedral  city,  I  shall  have  a  pleasure,  always  a  great  one 
to  me  when  near  a  cathedral,  of  reading  them  during  the  service 
up  and  down  the  aisle." 

All  this  is  in  the  true  Shaksperian  key  of  Eomantic  Love, 
as  are  the  Love-letters  of  Burns,  Byron,  Moore,  Heine,  Burger, 
Lenau,  and  most  other  poets.  Room  must  be  made  here  for  a 
few  extracts  from  Lenau's  letters  to  his  love,  which,  in  some 
respects,  resemble  those  of  Keats — equally  polished,  poetic,  deep, 
and  sincere : — 


HOW  TO  \VLN  LOVE  249 

"  It  makes  me  melancholy  to  see  how  incapable  I  am  of  sym- 
pathising with  the  pleasures  of  my  friends.  My  Love  goes  out  afar 
towards  you  ;  it  hearkens  and  listens  and  stares  in  the  distance  for 
you,  and  takes  no  note  of  all  the  love  by  which  it  is  surrounded 
here.  I  am  truly  ill.  I  constantly  think  of  you  alone  and  death. 
It  often  seems  to  me  as  if  my  time  had  expired.  I  cannot  write 
poetry,  I  cannot  rejoice  in  anything,  cannot  hope,  can  only  think 
of  you  and  death.  The  other  day  I  wrote  to  you  to  take  good 
care  of  your  health — though  I  myself  feel  so  little  desire  to  live." 

"  The  whole  evening  I  was  unable  to  think  of  anything  but  of 
you  and  the  possibility  of  losing  you.  The  large  crowd  of  people 
seemed  to  have  assembled  on  purpose  to  show  me  most  painfully 
what  a  mere  nothing  the  world  would  be  to  me  if  I  had  to  part 
from  you.  I  constantly  saw  but  your  face,  your  lovely,  divine 
eye." 

"  Alexander  wishes  me  to  go  to  the  baths  at  Leuk  with  him. 
He  is  quite  ill  But  I  cannot  go.  If  I  have  to  see  Switzerland 
without  you,  I  prefer  not  to  see  it  at  all." 

"My  poetic  composition  is  in  a  bad  way.  Though  a  thought 
sprouts  in  me  here  and  there,  it  withers  before  it  has  reached 
maturity.  When  I  go  to  see  you  I  shall  bring  along  a  dry  wreath 
of  prematurely-faded  poetic  blossoms,  and  make  them  revive  in 
your  presence,  as  there  are  warm  fountains  dipped  into  which  faded 
flowers  blossom  again." 

"  I  have  lost  all  pleasure  in  other  people  when  you  are  absent. 
If  you  had  only  been  at  Weinsberg  !  Even  the  ^Eolian  harps  did 
not  produce  the  usual  impression  on  me."  It  is  noticeable  how 
the  overtone  of  Monopoly  is  accented  in  all  these  plaints. 

"I  have  found  in  your  companionship  more  evidence  of  an 
eternal  life  than  in  all  my  investigations  and  studies  of  nature. 
Whenever,  in  a  happy  hour,  I  believed  I  had  reached  the  climax 
of  Love  and  the  proper  moment  for  death,  since  a  more  delicious 
moment  could  never  follow :  it  was  on  each  occasion  an  illusion, 
for  another  hour  followed  in  which  I  loved  you  still  more  deeply. 
These  ever  new,  ever  deeper  abysses  of  life  convince  me  of  its 
immortality.  To-day  I  saw  in  your  eyes  the  full  measure  of  the 
divine.  Most  distinctly  did  I  perceive  to-day  that  the  swelling  and 
sinking  of  the  eye  is  the  breathing  of  the  soul.  In  an  eye  of  such 
beauty  as  yours  we  can  see,  as  in  a  prophetic  hieroglyphic,  the 
essence  of  which  some  day  our  immortal  body  will  consist.  If  I 
die,  I  shall  depart  rich,  for  I  have  seeu  what  is  most  beautiful  iu 
the  world." 

"  The  rose  you  gave  ine  at  parting  has  a  most  delicious  fra- 


250  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

grance,  as  if  it  were  a  Good-Night  from  you !  Sleep  well,  dearest 
heart !  Preserve  the  second  rose  as  a  memento.  I  love  you 
immeasurably." 

No  doubt  the  average  Love-letters  read  in  courts  of  justice  in 
breach  of  promise  cases,  to  the  intense  amusement  of  the  audience, 
are  very  different  in  character  from  these  poetic  effusions.  But  to 
say  that,  because  the  average  Love-letters  are  ludicrous,  therefore 
all  Love-letters,  to  be  genuine,  must  be  ludicrous  and  incoherent, 
is  the  very  Bedlam  of  absurdity.  What  makes  common  Love- 
letters  so  laughable  is  the  fact  that  the  writer,  previously  a  para- 
gon of  prosiness,  suddenly  gets  some  poetic  fancies  and  tries  to  put 
them  into  language.  But  as  the  writing  of  poetry — in  verse  or 
prose — is  a  more  difficult  art  than  piano-playing,  first  attempts 
cannot  be  otherwise  than  harrowing  or  amusing.  On  the  other 
hand,  just  as  a  pianist  can  never  improvise  so  soulfully  as  when  he 
is  in  love,  so  a  poet  will  write  his  best  prose  in  the  letters  addressed 
to  his  love ;  the  only  ludicrous  feature  being  that  extravagant  and 
exclusive  admiration  of  one  person  which  is  the  very  essence  of 
Love.  ^ 

Surely  "Hawthorne  was  neither  "insincere"  nor  "thinking  of 
posterity  "  w^en  he  finished  one  of  his  Love-letters  with  this  poetic 
conceit,  expressed  in  his  best  prose  style  : — 

"  When  we  shall  be  endowed  with  spiritual  bodies  I  think  they 
will  be  so  constituted  that  we  may  send  thoughts  and  feelings  any 
distance,  in  no  time  at  all,  and  transfuse  them  warm  and  fresh  into 
the  consciousness  of  those  we  love.  Oh,  what  happiness  it  would 
be,  at  this  moment,  if  'I  could  be  conscious  of  some  purer  feeling, 
some  more  delicate  sentiment,  some  lovelier  fantasy  than  could 
possibly  have  had  its  birth  in  my  own  nature,  and  therefore  be 
aware  that  you  were  thinking  through  my  mind  and  feeling  through 
my  heart !  Perhaps  you  possess  this  power  already." 

This  is  true  epistolary  Love-making — the  sublimated  essence  of 
complimentary  Gallantry. 

LOVE-CHARMS   FOR  WOMEN 

As  women  are  not  allowed  to  make  Love  actively,  they  resort 
to  various  cunning  arts  with  which  they  indirectly  reach  the  hard 
hearts  of  men.  Magic  is  the  most  potent  of  these  arts,  and  always 
has  been  so  considered  by  women  ;  for,  curiously  enough,  one  finda 
on  looking  over  the  folklore  of  various  nations,  ancient  and  modern, 
that  in  nineteen  cases  out  of  twenty  where  a  Love-charm  is  spoken 
of,  it  is  one  used  by  women  to  win  the  affection  of  men. 


HOW  TO  WIN  LOVE  251 

Probably  the  real  reason  why  the  vast  majority  of  women  are 
so  curiously  indifferent  to  the  hygienic  arts  of  increasing  and  pre- 
serving Personal  Beauty — as  shown  in  their  devotion  to  tight- 
lacing,  their  aversion  to  fresh  air,  sunshine,  and  brisk  exercise — is 
because  they  know  they  can  infallibly  win  a  man's  Love  by  the  use 
of  some  simple  powder  or  potion.  It  is  well  known  that  the 
Roman  poet  Lucretius  took  his  life  in  an  amorous  fit  caused  by  a 
love-potion ;  and  Lucullus  lost  his  reason  in  the  same  way.  The 
grandest  musical  work  in  existence  would  never  have  been  written 
had  not  Brangane  given  to  Tristan  and  Isolde  a  love-potion  which 
wras  so  powerful  that  it  made  not  only  both  the  victims  die  of  the 
fever  of  Love,  but  united  them  even  after  death  :  "  For  from  the 
grave  of  Tristan  sprang  a  plant  which  descended  into  the  grave  of 
Yseult.  Cut  down  thrice  by  order  of  the  Cornish  king,  the  irre- 
pressible vegetable  bloomed  verdant  as  ever  next  morning,  and 
even  now  casts  its  shadow  over  the  tombs  of  the  lovers — 
** '  An  ay  it  grew,  an  ay  it  threw, 
As  they  would  fain  be  one.' " 

In  mediaeval  times  Personal  Beauty  was  such  a  rara  thing,  and 
created  such  havoc  among  men,  that  the  unhappy  possessors  of  it 
were  frequently  accused  of  using  forbidden  Love-charms,  and  burnt 
at  the  stake  as  witches. 

To-day,  thanks  to  our  superior  sanitary  and  educational  arrange- 
ments, Beauty  is  such  a  common  affair  that  it  has  lost  all  its  effect 
on  the  masculine  heart ;  hence  girls  should  carefully  note  a  few  of 
the  ways  by  which  a  man  may  be  irresistibly  fascinated. 

Italian  girls  practise  the  following  method  :  A  lizard  is  caught, 
drowned  in  wine,  dried  in  the  sun  and  reduced  to  powder,  some  of 
which  is  thrown  on  the  obdurate  man,  who  thenceforth  is  theirs 
for  evermore. 

A  favourite  Slavonic  device  is  to  cut  the  finger,  let  a  few  drops 
of  her  blood  run  into  a  glass  of  beer,  and  make  the  adored  man 
drink  it  unknowingly.  The  same  method  is  current  in  Hesse  and 
Oldenburg,  according  to  Dr.  Ploss.  In  Bohemia,  the  girl  who  is 
afraid  to  wound  her  finger  may  substitute  a  few  drops  of  bat's 
blood. 

Cases  are  known  where  invocations  to  the  moon  were  followed 
by  the  bestowal  of  true  Love.  And  if  a  girl  will  address  the  new 
moon  as  follows — 

"  All  hail  to  thee,  moon  !    All  hail  to  thee  1 
Prit^pe.  good  moon,  reveal  to  me. 
This  night  who  my  husband  shall  be," 

she  will  dream  of  him  that  very  night. 


-252  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

A  four-leaved  clover  secretly  placed  in  a  man's  shoes  will  make 
him  the  devoted  lover  of  the  woman  who  puts  it  in. 

"  Inside  a  frog  is  a  certain  crooked  bone,  which,  when  cleaned 
and  dried  over  the  fire  on  St.  John's  Eve,  and  then  ground  fine 
and  given  in  food  to  the  lover,  will  at  once  win  his  love  for  the 
administerer." 

j  If  a  girl  sees  a  man  washing  his  hands — say  at  a  picnic — and 
llends  him  her  apron  or  handkerchief  to  dry  them,  he  will  forthwith; 
Declare  himself  her  amorous  slave  to  eternity. 

There  are  men,  however,  who,  owing  to  some  constitutional 
defect  or  inherited  anomaly,  remain  unaffected  by  these  and  similar 
arts.  Should  any  woman  be  so  foolish  as  to  crave  such  a  man's 
Love,  she  will  do  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  Vanity  is  the  back- 
door by  which  every  marts  heart  may  be  entered.  Thus  Byron  says 
of  a  Venetian  flame  of  his  :  "But  her  great  merit  is  finding  out 
mine — there  is  nothing  so  amiable  as  discernment."  "  Let?  her  be," 
says  Thackeray,  "  if  not  a  clever  woman,  an  appreciator  of  clever- 
ness in  others,  which,  perhaps,  clever  folks  like  better."  '•  Ne'er," 
says  Scott, 

"  '  Was  flattery  lost  on  poet's  ears : 
A  simple  race  !  they  waste  their  toil 
For  the  vain  tribute  of  a  smile.'  " 

Rousseau's  last  love  was  inspired  by  a  woman's  admiration  of  his 
writings.  Balzac,  celibate  for  many  years,  was  at  last  captured  by 
a  woman  who  returned  to  a  hotel  room  for  a  volume  of  his  works 
she  had  left  there,  informing  him,  without  suspecting  who  he  was, 
that  she  never  travelled  without  it  and  could  not  live  without  it. 

"  The  story  of  the  marriage  of  Lamartine,"  says  the  author  of 
Salad  for  the  Solitary,  "  is  also  one  of  romantic  interest.  The 
lady,  whose  maiden  name  was  Birch,  was  possessed  of  considerable 
property,  and  when  past  the  bloom  of  youth  she  became  passion- 
ately enamoured  of  the  poet  from  the  perusal  of  his  Meditations. 
For  some  time  she  nursed  this  sentiment  in  secret,  and,  being 
apprised  of  the  embarrassed  state  of  his  affairs,  she  wrote  him, 
tendering  him  the  bulk  of  her  fortune.  Touched  with  this  re- 
markable proof  of  her  generosity,  and  supposing  it  could  only  be 
caused  by  a  preference  for  himself,  he  at  once  made  an  offer  of  his 
hand  and  heart.  Ha  imln-nri  T-in-^fiy,  and  t^e  pnet  was  ;  omptly 

•  :',  beauty,  wit,  elegant  mann&s,  amiability— these  are 
.  ever  sure  of  their  j^ra.      f  Siie  k  ed  me 

for  tho  dangers  I -had  passed,"  says  Utheiio,  "and  I  loved  her  that 
she  did  pity  them."  Or,  as  Professor  Dowden  comments  on  this 


HOW  TO  WIN  LOVE  253 

passage,  "the  beautiful  Italian  girl  is  fascinated  by  the  regal 
strength  and  grandeur,  and  tender  protectiveness  of  the  Moor. 
He  is  charmed  by  the  sweetness,  the  sympathy,  the  gentle  disposi- 
tion, the  gracious  womanliness  of  Desdemona." 

"  The  gracious  womanliness  of  Desdemona."  There  lies  the 
secret — the  charm  of  charms.  It  is  fortunate  that  the  political 
viragoes  of  to-day,  who  would  remove  woman  from  her  domestic 
sphere,  have  opposed  to  them  the  greatest  force  in  the  universe — 
the  power  of  man's  Love  !  When  they  have  overcome  that,  they 
will  find  it  easy  to  dam  the  current  of  the  Niagara  River,  and  curb 
the  force  of  the  ocean's  countless  breakers. 


PROPOSING 

Countless  as  the  stars,  and  only  too  apposite,  are  the  jokes 
about  lovers  who  evolve  masterpieces  of  eloquence  wherewith  to 
lay  their  hearts  at  their  idol's  feet ;  but  who,  when  the  crucial 
moment  of  the  trial  arrives,  like  Beckmesser  iu  Wagner's  comic 
opera,  stutter  out  the  veriest  parody  of  their  song  of  Love.  And 
no  wonder,  considering  what  is  at  stake ;  for  the  Yes  or  No  decides 
whether  the  lover  is  to  be — literally — the  happiest  or  the  un- 
happiest  of  all  men  for  weeks  or  months  to  come. 

Ovid  cautions  a  man  not  to  select  a  sweetheart  in  the  twilight 
or  lamplight,  since  "  spots  are  invisible  at  night  and  every  fault 
is  overlooked;  at  that  time  almost  every  woman  is  held  to  be 
beautiful." 

But  proposing  is  a  different  matter  from  selecting.  When  once 
the  choice  is  made,  and  her  choice  alone  remains  to  be  decided, 
twilight  is  the  only  proper  time  to  "  pop  the  question."  For  a 
maiden's  independence  and  Coyness  are  inversely  related  to  the 
degree  of  light.  Injth^minmngrin  broad  daylight,  she  can  boldly 
face  even  the  terrible  thought  of  being  left  an  old  maid ;  but  in 
the"  twilight  she  feels  the  need  of  a  man's  protection,  and  it  is  at 
that  time  that  the  imagination  is  least  deaf  to  the  whispered  and 
self -suggested  fancies  of  Romantic  Love  and  wedded  bliss.  A 
man  who  proposes  in  the  morning  deserves,  therefore,  to  be  dis- 
appointed. 

Nature  herself  has  provided  a  safeguard  against  morning  nrrv 
posals.  No  woman  ia  «">  ^"-^iftd  in  the  daytime  as  in  the  even- 
ing; anc 

magic  ,eff  autifying  the  complexion  anri 

and  thus  'iiging  the  lover's  courage  to  the  point  of  amormia  ron. 
Cession. 


254  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

There  is  still  another  reason  why  a  tender  and  considerate 
lover  should  propose  in  the  chiaroscuro  of  subdued  light — to  spare 
her  blushes — 

"  But  'ncath  yon  crimson  tree, 
Lover  to  listening  maid  might  breathe  his  flame, 
Nor  mark,  within  its  roseate  canopy, 
Her  blush  of  maiden  shame." — BUY  ANT. 

Not  many  years  ago  a  plan  was  described  in  the  newspapers  by 
which  a  number  of  Southern  youths  who  had  not  the  courage  to 
propose  were  happily  mated  and  wedded.  An  elderly  person  was 
selected,  vowed  to  eternal  secrecy,  and  to  him  each  youth  and 
maiden  who  was  in  love  confided  in  writing  the  name  of  the  be- 
loved. Those  couples  that  had  chosen  one  another  were  informed 
of  the  fact,  and  went  away  rejoicing,  arm  in  arm. 

A  fairy  story,  on  the  face  of  it.  A  woman  would  sooner  cut  off 
her  hand  than  write  with  it  the  secret  of  her  Love  before  she 
knew  it  was  returned  ;  and  that  man  that  hath  a  tongue  is,  I  say, 
no  man,  if  he  is  afraid  to  ask  for  a  woman's  hand — or  to  take  it 
unasked,  and  let  it  respond  to  the  touching  question.  "  Love 
sought  is  good,  but  given  unsought  is  better,"  says  Shakspere.. 
The  only  true  proposals  are  those  where  spoken  words  are  dis- 
pensed with ;  where  the  magnetic  thrill  of  the  hands,  the  eloquence 
of  the  tell-tale  eyes,  draw  the  lovers  into  mutual  embrace,  and  lips 
become  glued  on  lips  in  unpremeditated  ecstasy. 

DIAGNOSIS   OR  SIGNS   OF   LOVE 

Though  women  may  often  feel  in  doubt  concerning  the  in- 
tentions of  men  who  pay  them  attentions,  they  cannot  help  recog- 
nising deep  Love  in  a  man  instantly;  for  the  symptoms,  as  described 
in  a  previous  chapter,  are  absolutely  unmistakable.  A  woman, 
too,  who  loves  deeply,  can  hardly  help  betraying  herself,  by  the 
sly  opportunities  she  finds  for  meeting  her  lover  (purely  accidental, 
of  course),  and  by  the  special  pains  she  takes  to  make  it  clear  to 
her  friends  that  she  does  not  care  for  that  man  certainly;  often 
also  by  the  fact,  pointed  out  by  Jean  Paul,  that  "  Love  increases 
man's  delicacy  and  lessens  woman's";  tempting  her  occasionally 
to  throw  away  all  prudence  and  regard  for  public  opinion,  in  the 
wild  intoxication  of  her  passion  and  her  confidence  in  her  lover. 

But  in  cases  of  doubt — how  is  a  lover  to  decide  whether  it  is 
safe  and  wcr*1;1  wMle  to  proceed?  A  woman's  Coyness,  of  course, 
means  nothing,  and  may  have  been  brought  on  by  an  assumption 
of  excessive  confidence  and  boldness  on  the  man's  part.  Girls  are 


HOW  TO  CUKE  LOVE  255 

like  wild  colts.  They  may  be  safely  approached  to  a  certain  dis- 
tance, whence  one  step  more  will  cause  them  to  stampede;  but 
stand  still  at  that  point,  and  before  long  they  will  cast  away  fear 
and  meet  you  half-way. 

Trifles  are  the  only  safe  tests  of  Love.  For  they  are  not  so 
apt  as  weighty  words  and  actions  to  be  the  outcome  of  a  deliberate 
coquettish  desire  to  deceive.  To  ascertain  if  you  are  loved — and 
this  holds  true  for  both  sexes — allude  (with  a  careless  assumption 
of  indifference)  to  some  trifling  details  of  previous  conversation  or 
common  experience.  If  she  (or  he)  remembers  them  all,  especially 
if  of  remote  occurrence,  the  chances  are  you  are  loved. 

Shakspere  evidently  had  this  in  mind  when  he  wrote — 

"  If  thou  rememberest  not  the  slightest  folly 
That  ever  love  did  make  thee  run  into, 
Thou  hast  not  loved." 


HOW  TO  CURE  LOVE 

All  hope  abandon  ye  who  enter  here.  It  is  a  terrible  haunt 
of  pessimism,  for  disappointed  lovers  only.  All  others  will  please 
pass  it  by,  for  the  object  of  this  book  is  to  advocate  the  cause  of 
Love,  not  to  weaken  it.  Only  when  all  hope  of  reciprocation  is 
abandoned,  should  the  tender  plant  ever  be  crushed  underfoot. 

An  exception  must  be  made  in  favour  of  those  hopeful  lovers 
who  merely  wish  to  cure  themselves  in  order  to  improve  their 
chances  of  winning,  as  explained  in  the  last  chapter,  under  the 
head  of  Feigned  Indifference. 

It  is  useless  to  quote  to  a  rejected  lover  Rosalind's  philosophy : 
"  Our  poor  world  is  almost  six  thousand  years  old,  and  in  all  this 
time  there  was  not  any  man  died  in  his  own  person,  videlicet,  in  a 
love  cause.  .  .  .  Men  have  died  from  time  to  time,  and  worms 
have  eaten  them,  but  not  for  love."  Useless  to  tell  him,  as 
Emerson  does,  that  it  is  not  a  disgrace  to  love  unrequitedly :  "  It 
never  troubles  the  sun  that  some  of  his  rays  fall  wide  and  vain 
into  ungrateful  space,  and  only  a  small  part  on  the  reflecting 
planet." 

To  all  such  efforts  at  consolation  the  poor  wretch  may  retort 
with  Shakspere :  "  Every  one  may  master  a  grief  but  he  who 
has  it."  Yet  he  may,  at  any  rate,  endeavour  to  "patch  his 
grief"  with  the  following  reflections,  based  on  the  experience  of 
centuries. 


KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 


ABSENCE 

Two  thousand  years  ago  Ovid  advised  the  readers  of  his 
Eemedia  Amoris  who  wished  to  cure  themselves  of  an  unwelcome 
attachment  to  flee  the  capital,  to  travel,  hunt,  or  till  the  soil  till 
all  danger  of  a  relapse  should  be  averted.  "  Out  of  sight,  out  of 
mind,"  wrote  Thomas  a  Kempis ;  and  this  theme  has  been  varied 
by  a  hundred  writers  in  prose  and  verse.  "Love  is  a  local 
anguish,"  exclaims  Coleridge ;  "  I  am  fifty  miles  away  and  am  not 
half  so  miserable."  Carew  puts  it  thus — 

"  Then  fly  betimes,  for  only  they 
Conquer  love,  that  run  away." 

Even  the  unspeakable  Turk  has  a  proverb  advising  a  lover  to  fly 
to  the  mountains.  The  Himalayas  are  probably  meant,  for  no 
other  chain  would  be  high  enough  to  allay  the  anguish  of  a  poly- 
gamist  rejected  by  a  whole  harem. 

On  the  other  hand,  "  I  find  that  absence  still  increases  love," 
wrote  Charles  Hopkins  in  the  seventeenth  century;  and  Bayly- 
gave  this  paradox  the  familiar  form  of  "absence  makes  the  heart 
grow  fonder" — to  which  a  modern  realistic  wag  has  added  the 
coda  "  of  the  other  man."  "  La  Rochefoucauld  has  well  remarked," 
says  Hume,  "that  absence  destroys  weak  passions,  but  increases 
strong  ones ;  as  the  wind  extinguishes  a  candle  but  blows  up  a 
fire." 

This  simile  is  not  very  appropriate,  nor  is  the  statement  un- 
questionable. It  is  more  correct  to  say  that  short  absence  increases 
Love,  while  long  absence  cures  it. 

There  are  two  ways  in  which  a  short  absence  favours  Love : 

Like  the  thirst  of  a  man  who  would  wean  himself  of  strong 
liquor,  the  lover's  ardour  is  at  first  increased  when  he  is  placed 
where  he  can  no  longer  drink  in  the  intoxicating  sight  of  her 
beauty.  Time  is  needed  to  annihilate  the  maddening  memory  of 
that  pleasure. 

Secondly,  short  absence  favours  the  idealising  process  in  the 
lover's  mind.  Removed  from  the  corrective  influence  of  her  actual 
presence,  his  imagination  may  abandon  itself  to  the  delightful  task 
of  painting  a  gloriously  unreal  counterfeit  of  her  charms — which  is 
oil  in  the  flames. 

This  idealising  process  is  facilitated  by  the  strange  difficulty 
which  most  people — and  lovers  in  particular — experience  in  recalling 
the  features  of  those  specially  dear  to  them. 


HOW  TO  CUBE  LOVE  257 

Given  sufficient  time  to  fix  the  idealised  image  of  the  beloved 
in  the  memory,  and  a  cure  may  be  effected  through  the  shock  sub- 
sequently felt  on  comparing  this  image  with  the  greatly  inferior 
reality. 

TRAVEL 

It  is  safer,  however,  not  to  risk  a  return,  but  to  avoid  sight  of 
her  altogether  for  several  years.  The  advantages  of  travel  are 
twofold,  not  to  mention  the  security  from  the  danger  of  an 
accidental  meeting.  At  home  the  surrounding  world  is  too  familiar 
to  afford  distraction,  whereas  in  a  strange  place  every  object  claims 
the  attention  and  diverts  the  mind  from  its  amorous  reveries. 
More  important  still  is  the  fact  that  in  a  foreign  country  the 
strangeness  of  national  physiognomy  invests  all  women  with  a 
heightened  charm,  so  that  it  is  easier  to  find  an  antidote  by  falling 
in  love  anew. 

EMPLOYMENT 

"  Great  spirits  and  great  business  do  keep  out  the  weak  passion 
of  love,"  said  Bacon ;  but  long  before  him  Ovid  knew  that  Leisure 
is  Cupid's  chief  ally.  "  If  you  desire  to  end  your  love,  employ 
yourself  and  you  will  conquer ;  for  Amor  flees  business."  He 
advises  military  service,  agriculture,  and  hunting  as  excellent 
diversions. 

Poetry  and  music,  however,  as  the  same  poet  tells  us,  and  all 
other  occupations  tending  to  stir  up  the  tender  feelings,  are  to  be 
carefully  avoided.  Novel -reading  is  particularly  bad,  for  to 
imagine  another's  Love  is  to  revive  your  own.  "  Lotte  Hartmann 
played  some  melodies  of  Bellini  on  the  piano  this  evening,"  writes 
Leuau ;  "  I  ought  to  avoid  music  when  I  am  away  from  you,  for  it 
arouses  in  me  a  longing  and  an  anguish  of  consuming  violence.  I 
feel  how  my  heart  sadly  shrinks  within  itself,  and  unwillingly 
continues  to  beat." 

MARRIED  MISERY 

Surely  the  thought  that  his  romantic  adoration  will  cease  with 
marriage  ought  to  cure  a  rejected  wooer.  Unquestionably,  marriage 
is  the  best  cure  of  Love.  For  though  cynics  are  wrong  in  claim- 
ing that  wedlock  changes  Love  to  indifference,  it  does  change  it  to 
conjugal  affection,  which  is  an  entirely  different  group  of  emotions. 
To  the  rejected  lover,  unfortunately,  matrimony  is  not  available  as 
a  cure  of  his  Love.  But  he  may  give  his  overheated  imagination 
an  ice-bath  by  reflecting  on  the  dark  side  of  conjugal  life,  the 


258  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

promised  bliss  of  which  has  been  described  as  a  mirage  by  so 
many  great  minds. 

Professor  Jowett  thus  discourses  on  how  a  modern  Sokrates 
in  a  cynical  mood  might  discourse  on  the  seamy  side  of  married 
life  :— 

"  How  the  inferior  of  the  two  drags  the  other  down  to  his  or 
her  level ;  how  the  cares  of  a  family  *  breed  meanness  in  their 
souls.'  .  .  .  They  cannot  undertake  any  noble  enterprise,  such  as 
makes  the  names  of  men  and  women  famous,  from  domestic  con- 
siderations. Too  late  their  eyes  are  opened ;  they  were  taken 
unawares,  and  desire  to  part  company.  Better,  he  would  say,  a 
1  little  love  at  the  beginning,'  for  heaven  might  have  increased  it ; 
but  now  their  foolish  fondness  has  changed  into  mutual  dislike. 
.  .  .  How  much  nobler,  in  conclusion  he  will  say,  is  friendship, 
which  does  not  receive  unmeaning  praises  from  novelists  and 
poets,  is  not  exacting  or  exclusive,  is  not  impaired  by  familiarity, 
is  much  less  expensive,  is  not  so  likely  to  take  offence,  seldom 
changes,  and  may  be  dissolved  from  time  to  time  without  the 
assistance  of  the  courts." 

Dr.  Johnson,  in  a  letter  to  Baretti,  points  out  the  difference 
between  Love  and  Marriage  : 

"In  love,  as  in  every  other  passion  of  which  hope  is  the 
essence,  we  ought  always  to  remember  the  uncertainty  of  events. 
There  is,  indeed,  nothing  that  so  much  seduces  reason  from 
vigilance  as  the  thought  of  passing  life  with  an  amiable  woman ; 
and  if  all  would  happen  that  a  lover  fancies,  I  know  not  what 
other  terrestrial  happiness  would  deserve  pursuit.  But  love  and 
marriage  are  different  states.  Those  who  are  to  suffer  the  evils 
together,  and  to  suffer  often  for  the  sake  of  one  another,  soon  lose 
tliai  tenderness  of  look  and  that  benevolence  of  mind  which  arose 
from  the  participation  of  unmingled  pleasure  and  successive 
amusement." 

"  Lose  that  tenderness  of  look  !"  Have  you  reflected  that  it  is 
that  exquisite  tenderness  of  look  which  chiefly  fascinated  you,  and 
have  you  not  noticed  that,  as  Johnson  implies,  married  people 
rarely  regard  one  another  with  that  look  which  constantly  intoxi- 
cated them  during  Courtship  ?  For  "  beauty  soon  grows  familiar 
to  the  lover,  fades  in  his  eye,  and  palls  upon  the  sense,"  says 
Addison ;  or,  as  Hazlitt  puts  it,  "  though  familiarity  may  not  breed 
contempt,  it  takes  off  the  edge  of  admiration." 

"  With  most  marriages,"  says  Goethe,  "  it  is  not  long  till  things 
assume  a  very  piteous  look."  Raleigh  :  "  If  thou  marry  beauty, 
thou  bindest  thyself  all  thy  life  for  that  which,  perchance,  will 


HOW  TO  CURE  LOVE  259 

neither  last  nor  please  thee  one  year."  Seneca :  "  Beauty  is  such 
a  fleeting  blossom,  how  can  wisdom  rely  upon  its  momentary 
delight?"  Howells :  "Marian  Butler  was  at  that  period  full  of 
those  airs  of  self-abnegation  with  which  women  adorn  themselves 
in  the  last  days  of  betrothal  and  the  first  of  marriage,  and  never 
afterwards."  Alexander  Walker :  "  It  looks  as  if  woman  were  in 
possession  of  most  enjoyments,  and  as  if  man  had  only  an  illusion 
held  out  to  him  to  make  him  labour  for  her." 

Montaigne :  "  As  soon  as  women  are  ours  we  are  no  longer 
theirs."  "  The  land  of  marriage  has  this  peculiarity  that  strangers 
are  desirous  of  inhabiting  it,  while  its  natural  inhabitants  would 
willingly  be  banished  thence."  Boucicault :  "  I  wish  that  Adam 
had  died  with  all  his  ribs  in  his  body."  De  Finod :  "  Marriage  is 
the  sunset  of  love."  Goldsmith  :  "  Many  of  the  English  marry  in 
order  to  have  one  happy  month  in  their  lives."  Hood :  "  You 
can't  wive  and  thrive  both  in  the  same  year."  Southey  :  "  There 
are  three  things  a  wise  man  will  not  trust, — the  wind,  the  sun- 
shine of  an  April  day,  and  a  woman's  plighted  faith."  Byron : 
"  I  remarked  in  my  illness  the  complete  inertion,  inaction,  and 
destruction  of  my  chief  mental  faculties.  I  tried  to  rouse  them, 
and  yet  could  not — and  this  is  the  Sovlf//  I  should  believe 
that  it  was  married  to  the  body  if  they  did  not  sympathise  so  much 
with  each  other."  Colley  Gibber :  "  Oh,  how  many  torments  lie  in 
the  small  circle  of  a  wedding-ring  ! "  Alphonse  Karr :  "Women  for 
the  most  part  do  not  love  us.  They  do  not  choose  a  man  because 
they  love  him,  but  because  it  pleases  them  to  be  loved  by  him." 

Lady  Montagu :  "  It  goes  far  toward  reconciling  me  to  being  a 
woman,  when  I  reflect  that  I  am  thus  in  no  immediate  danger  of 
ever  marrying  one."  Schopenhauer :  "  It  is  well  known  that 
happy  marriages  are  rare."  "  The  lover,  contrary  to  expectation, 
finds  himself  no  happier  than  before."  Byron — 

"  Think  you  if  Laura  had  been  Petrarch's  wife 
He  would  have  written  sonnets  all  his  life  ? " 

Burton :  "  Paul  commended  marriage,  yet  he  preferred  a  single 
life."  Buxton :  "  Juliet  was  a  fool  to  kill  herself,  for  in  three 
months  she'd  have  married  again,  and  been  glad  to  be  quit  of 
Romeo."  Heine:  "The  music  at  a  marriage  procession  always 
reminds  me  of  the  music  which  leads  soldiers  to  battle."  Lessing — 

"  Ein  einzig  boses  Weib  gibt's  hochstens  in  der  Welt, 
Nur  schade  dass  ein  jeder  es  fur  das  seine  halt." 

"  Of  shrewish  women  in  the  world  there's  surely  only  one, 
A  pity,  though,  that  every  man  says  she's  the  wife  he  won." 


260  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Selden  :  "  Marriage  is  a  desperate  thing.  The  frogs  in  JEsop  were 
extremely  wise  ;  they  had  a  great  mind  to  some  water,  but  they 
would  not  leap  into  the  well,  because  they  could  not  get  out 
again." 

When  the  Pope  heard  of  Father  Hyacinthe's  marriage,  says 
Oheales,  he  exclaimed  :  "  The  saints  be  praised  !  the  renegade  has 
taken  his  punishment  into  his  own  hands.  Truly  the  ways  of 
Providence  are  inscrutable ! " 


FEMININE  INFERIORITY 

Why  are  women  so  mysterious,  so  inscrutable?  Cynics  say 
because  you  cannot  calculate  what  they  will  do,  as  they  have  no 
fixed  compass  by  which  they  steer,  i.e.  no  character.  But  Heine 
takes  up  their  defence.  Far  from  having  no  character,  he  says, 
they  have  a  new  one  every  day. 

The  world's  opinion  of  women  is  best  revealed  in  the  crystallised 
wisdom,  based  on  experience,  called  proverbs.  It  will  soothe  the 
wounded  lover's  heart  to  note  the  unanimity  with  which  woman's 
foibles  are  dwelt  on  in  the  proverbs  of  all  nations  from  ancient 
Greece  to  modern  China  and  France.  To  give  only  three  instances 
of  a  thousand  that  may  be  found  in  any  collection  of  proverbs : 
"  Women,"  says  a  French  proverb,  "  have  quicksilver  in  the  brain, 
wax  in  the  heart."  The  old  Greek  poet  Xenarchus  sang,  "  Happy 
the  cicadas  live,  since  they  all  have  voiceless  wives."  "  There  is 
no  such  poison  in  the  green  snake's  mouth  or  in  the  hornet's  sting 
as  in  a  woman's  heart,"  says  a  Chinese  maxim. 

But  it  is  not  necessary  to  rely  on  such  anonymous  collections 
of  wisdom  as  proverbs  to  convince  a  man  of  the  folly  of  linking 
himself  for  life  with  such  a  miserable  inferior  being  as  a  woman. 
From  Plato  to  Darwin  there  is  a  consensus  of  opinion  as  to  woman's 
vast  inferiority  to  man. 

According  to  Plato,  says  Mr.  Grote,  "men  are  superior  to 
women  in  everything ;  in  one  occupation  as  well  as  in  another." 
Cookery  and  weaving  having  been  named  as  two  apparent  excep- 
tions, Plato  denies  woman's  superiority  even  in  these. 

"The  chief  distinction  in  the  intellectual  powers  of  the  two 
sexes,"  says  Darwin,  "  is  shown  by  man's  attaining  to  a  higher 
eminence,  in  whatever  he  takes  up,  than  can  woman — whether 
requiring  deep  thought,  reason,  or  imagination,  or  merely  the  use 
of  the  senses  and  hands.  If  two  lists  were  made  of  the  most 
eminent  men  and  women  in  poetry,  painting,  sculpture,  music 
(inclusive  both  of  composition  and  performance),  history,  science, 


HOW  TO  CURE  LOVE  261 

and  philosophy,  with  half  a  dozen  names  under  each  subject,  the 
two  lists  would  not  bear  comparison." 

"  I  found,  as  a  rule,"  says  Mr.  Galton,  "  that  men  have  more 
delicate  powers  of  discrimination  than  women,  and  the  business  of 
life  seems  to  confirm  this  view.  The  tuners  of  pianofortes  are  men, 
and  so,  I  understand,  are  the  tasters  of  tea  and  wine,  the  sorters  of 
wool,  and  the  like.  These  latter  occupations  are  well  salaried, 
because  it  is  of  the  first  moment  to  the  merchant  that  he  should 
be  rightly  advised  on  the  real  value  of  what  he  is  about  to  purchase 
or  to  sell.  If  the  sensitivity  of  women  were  superior  to  that  of 
men,  the  self-interest  of  merchants  would  lead  to  their  being 
always  employed ;  but  as  the  reverse  is  the  case,  the  opposite  sup- 
position is  likely  to  be  the  true  one. 

"Ladies  rarely  distinguish  the  merits  of  wine  at  the  dinner- 
table,  and  though  custom  allows  them  to  preside  at  the  breakfast- 
table,  men  think  them,  on  the  whole,  to  be  far  from  successful 
makers  of  tea  and  coffee." 

This  disposes  of  the  old  myth  that  women  are  more  sensitive 
than  men.  And  De  Quincy,  in  his  essay  on  False  Distinctions, 
refutes  the  equally  absurd  notion  that  "  women  have  more  imagina- 
tion than  men."  He  comes  to  the  conclusion  that,  "  as  to  poetry 
in  its  highest  form,  I  never  yet  knew  a  woman,  nor  yet  will  believe 
that  any  has  existed,  who  could  rise  to  an  entire  sympathy  with 
what  is  most  excellent  in  that  art." 

One  proof  of  this  statement  lies  in  the  fact  that  as  a  rule  men 
of  genius  have  been  refused  by  the  women  they  loved  most  deeply. 

Regarding  the  emotional  sphere,  we  have  seen  that  it  is  only  in 
parental  and  conjugal  feeling  that  woman  surpasses  man.  In 
Romantic  Love,  in  all  the  impersonal  feelings  for  art  and  nature, 
she  is  vastly  his  inferior.  Her  superficial  education  gives  her  no 
intellectual  interests,  and  that  is  the  reason  why  so  many  married 
men  prefer  the  club  and  friendship  to  home  and  conjugal  devotion 
— even  as  did  the  ancient  Greeks. 

It  is  in  the  seventh  book  of  the  Laws,  p.  806,  that  Plato 
remarks  :  "  The  legislator  ought  not  to  let  the  female  sex  live  softly 
and  waste  money  and  have  no  order  of  life,  while  he  takes  the 
utmost  care  of  the  male  sex,  and  leaves  half  of  life  only  blest  with 
happiness,  when  he  might  have  made  the  whole  state  happy." 

Is  it  not  humiliating  to  man,  who  loves  to  call  himself  a 
"  reasoning  animal,"  to  find  that,  after  so  many  centuries,  one  of 
our  greatest  and  most  liberal  thinkers,  Professor  Huxley,  is  obliged 
to  write  in  this  same  Platonic  tone  that  "  the  present  system  of 
female  education  stands  self-condemned,  as  inherently  absurd," 


262  EOMAKTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

because  it  fosters  and  exaggerates  instead  of  removing  woman's 
natural  disadvantages?  "With  few  insignificant  exceptions," 
Professor  Huxley  continues,  "girls  have  been  educated  either  to 
be  drudges  or  toys  beneath  man,  or  a  sort  of  angels  above  him ; 
the  highest  ideal  aimed  at  oscillating  between  Clarchen  and  Beatrice. 
The  possibility  that  the  ideal  of  womanhood  lies  neither  in  the  fair 
saint  nor  in  the  fair  sinner ;  that  women  are  meant  neither  to  be 
men's  guides  nor  their  playthings,  but  their  comrades,  their  fellows, 
and  their  equals,  so  far  as  Nature  puts  no  bar  to  their  equality, 
does  not  seem  to  have  entered  into  the  minds  of  those  who  have 
had  the  conduct  of  the  education  of  girls"  (Lay  Sennons,  p.  25). 

Woman,  in  short,  is  a  failure ;  and  let  any  disappointed  lover 
ask  himself,  Is  it  businesslike  to  begin  life  with  a  failure  1 

FOCUSSING   HEK  FAULTS 

Love  being  a  magic  emotional  microscope  which  ignites  passion 
by  magnifying  the  most  beautiful  features  of  the  beloved,  leaving 
everything  else  indistinct  and  blurred,  it  follows  that  the  simplest 
way  of  arresting  this  flame  is  to  change  the  focus  of  this  microscope^ 
to  fix  the  attention  deliberately  on  her  faults,  while  throwing  her 
merits  and  charms  into  an  unfavourable  light. 

This  method  is  too  self-evident  and  effective  not  to  have  occurred 
to  the  ingenious  Ovid.  He  advises  the  lover  who  wishes  to  be 
cured  to  study  the  girl's  charms  in  a  hypercritical  spirit.  Call  her 
stout  if  she  is  plump,  black  if  she  is  dark,  lean  if  slender.  Ask 
her  to  sing  if  she  has  no  talent  for  music,  to  talk  if  unskilled  in 
conversation,  to  dance  if  awkward,  and  if  her  teeth  are  bad,  tell 
her  funny  stories  to  make  her  laugh. 

Her  mental  faults  require  no  microscope  to  reveal  them.  Cer- 
tainly her  taste  is  execrable,  for  does  she  not  prefer  that  vulgar 
fellow  Jones  to  you,  one  of  the  cleverest  fellows  that  ever  conde- 
scended to  be  born  on  this  miserable  planet  ? 

What  folly,  indeed,  to  love  such  a  girl !  What  fascinates  you 
is  simply  the  mysterious  brilliancy  of  her  coal-black  eyes — of  which 
you  may  find  ten  thousand  duplicates  in  Italy  or  Spain.  Don't 
you  see  that  no  flashes  of  wit  are  ever  mirrored  in  those  eyes  1 
that,  though  beautiful,  they  are  soulless,  like  a  black  pansy  ?  that 
they  look  at  one  person  as  at  another,  incapable  oif  expressing 
shades  and  modulations  of  tender  emotion,  because  the  soul  of 
which  they  are  the  windows  has  never  been,  and  never  will  be, 
moved  by  Love  ? 

She  never  thinks  of  anything  but  her  own  pleasure;  does 


HOW  TO  CURE  LOVE  263 

nothing  but  visit  the  dressmaker  and  the  theatre  and  read  novels  ; 
never  thinks  it  her  duty  to  provide  for  her  future  husband's  com- 
fort and  happiness  by  educating  herself  in  domestic  economy  and 
aesthetic  accomplishments  of  real  depth — as  you  have  toiled  and 
studied  in  anticipation  of  providing  for  her  comfort  and  happiness. 
She  takes  no  sympathetic  interest  in  your  affairs — how  can  you 
expect  to  be  happy  with  her  ?  If  she  loves  you  not,  you  would  be 
more  than  a  fool  to  try  to  get  her  consent  to  marriage,  for  is  it  not 
the  ecstasy  of  Love  to  be  loved  and  worshipped  alone  and  beyond 
any  other  mortal  1 

The  beauty  of  her  eyes  will  not  last, — it  is  nothing,  anyway, 
but  sunlight  mechanically  reflected  from  a  darkly-painted  iris — and 
when  its  youthful  brilliancy  vanishes  there  will  be  no  soul-sparks 
to  take  its  place.  And  for  this  brief  honeymoon  mirage  you  are 
willing  to  give  up  your  bachelor  comforts  and  pleasures,  your 
freedom  to  do  what  you  please,  go  where  you  please,  and  travel 
whenever  you  please ;  to  exchange  your  refreshing  sleep  o'  nights 
for  domestic  cares  and  the  pleasure  of  trotting  up  and  down  the 
room  with  a  bawling  baby  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  1  Bah  ! 
Are  you  in  your  senses  ? 

True,  if  you  are  rich  some  of  these  disadvantages  may  be 
avoided.  But  if  you  are  rich  you  will  not  be  refused,  for — 

"Mammon  wins  his  way  where  seraphs  might  despair," 
as  Byron  remarks ;  and  again :  "  For  my  own  part,  I  am  of  the 
opinion  of  Pausanias,  that  success  in  love  depends  upon  Fortune" 

But  of  all  her  shortcomings  the  most  galling  and  fatal  is  that 
she  loves  you  not.  This  thought  alone,  says  Stendhal,  may  suc- 
ceed in  curing  a  man  of  his  passion.  You  will  notice,  he  says, 
that  she  whom  you  love  favours  others  with  little  attentions  which 
she  withholds  from  you.  They  may  be  mere  trifles,  such  as  not 
giving  you  a  chance  to  help  her  into  her  carriage,  her  box  at  the 
opera.  The  thought  of  this,  by  "  associating  a  sense  of  humiliation 
with  every  thought  of  her,  poisons  the  source  of  love  and  may 
destroy  it." 

Thus  wounded  Pride  is  the  easiest  way  out  of  Love,  as  gratified 
Pride  is  the  straightest  way  in. 

REASON    VERSUS  PASSION 

According  to  Shakspere,  though  Love  does  not  admit  Eeason  as 
his  counsellor,  he  does  use  him  as  his  physician.  The  most  effective 
way  of  using  Reason  to  cure  Love  is  by  way  of  comparison.  By 
dwelling  on  the  miseries  of  married  life  as  just  detailed,  the  disap- 


264  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

pointed  lover  may  mitigate  his  pains  somewhat,  as  did  that  Italian 
mentioned  by  Schopenhauer,  who  resisted  the  agony  of  torture  by 
constantly  keeping  in  his  mind's  eye  the  picture  of  the  gallows 
that  would,  have  been  the  reward  of  confession. 

Again,  he  may  compare  his  present  Love  with  a  former  infatua- 
tion that  seemed  at  the  time  equally  deep  and  eternal,  though  now 
he  wonders  how  he  could  have  ever  loved  that  girl.  History 
repeats  itself. 

Compare,  moreover,  your  present  idol  with  her  stout  and  faded 
mother.  In  a  few  years  she  will  perhaps  resemble  her  mother  more 
than  her  present  self. 

Compare  her  charms,  feature  by  feature,  with  some  recognised 
paragon  of  beauty.  Look  at  her  in  the  glaring  light  of  the  sun, 
which  reveals  every  spot  on  the  complexion. 

LOVE    VERSUS  LOVE 

Longfellow  says  it  is  folly  to  pretend  that  one  ever  wholly 
recovers  from  a  disappointed  passion ;  and  Mr.  Hamerton  believes 
that  "  a  wrinkled  old  maid  may  still  preserve  in  the  depths  of  her 
own  heart,  quite  unsuspected  by  the  young  and  lively  people  about 
her,  the  un  extinguished  embers  of  a  passion  that  first  made  her 
wretched  fifty  years  before." 

Occasionally  this  may  be  true,  in  the  sense  in  which  psychology 
teaches  that  no  impression  made  on  the  mind  is  ever  completely 
effaced,  but  may,  though  forgotten  for  years,  be  revived  in  moments 
of  great  excitement,  or  in  the  delirium  of  fever ;  as,  for  example, 
in  the  case  mentioned  by  Duval,  of  a  Pole  in  Germany,  who  had 
not  used  his  native  language  for  thirty  years,  but  who,  under  the 
influence  of  anaesthetics,  "  spoke,  prayed,  and  sang,  using  only  the 
Polish  language."  The  persistence  of  an  old  passion  is  the  more 
probable  from  the  fact  that  in  mental  disease  and  age,  as  Ribot 
points  out,  the  emotional  faculties  are  effaced  much  more  slowly 
than  the  intellectual.  Feelings  form  the  self;  amnesia  of  feeling 
is  the  destruction  of  self. 

Ordinarily,  however,  and  for  the  time  being,  it  may  be  possible 
to  practically  obliterate  a  passion.  "  All  love  may  be  expelled  by 
love,  as  poisons  are  by  other  poisons,"  says  Dryden.  And  if  the 
allopathic  remedies  described  in  the  preceding  paragraphs  should 
fail  to  effect  a  cure,  the  lover  may  find  the  homoeopathic  principle 
of  similia  similibus  more  successful. 

Heine,  in  his  posthumous  Memoirs,  thus  refers  to  this  principle 
of  curing  like  with  like  : — 


NATIONALITY  AND  LOVE  2«5 

"In  love,  as  in  the  Roman  Catholic  religion,  there  is  a 
provisional  purgatory  in  which  mortals  are  allowed  to  get  used 
gradually  to  being  roasted  before  they  get  into  the  real  eternal 
hell.  ...  In  all  honesty,  what  a  terrible  thing  is  love  for  a 
woman.  Inoculation  is  herein  of  no  use.  .  .  .  Very  wise  and 
experienced  physicians  counsel  a  change  of  locality  in  the  opinion 
that  removal  from  the  presence  of  the  enchantress  will  also  break 
the  charm.  Perhaps  the  homoaopathic  principle,  by  which  woman 
cures  us  of  woman,  is  the  best  of  all.  ...  It  was  ordained  that  I 
should  be  visited  more  severely  than  other  mortals  by  this  malady, 
the  heart-pox.  .  .  .  The  most  effective  antidote  to  women  are 
women  ;  true,  this  implies  an  attempt  to  expel  Satan  with  Beelze- 
bub ;  and  in  such  a  case  the  medicine  is  often  more  noxious  still 
than  the  malady.  But  it  is  at  any  rate  a  change,  and  in  a 
disconsolate  love-affair  a  change  of  the  inamorata  is  unquestionably 
the  best  policy." 

PROGNOSIS   OR   CHANCES   OF   RECOVERY 

After  carefully  following  all  the  foregoing  rules  regarding 
absence,  travel,  employment,  dwelling  on  the  miseries  of  marriage, 
the  weaknesses  of  women  in  general  and  one  woman  in  particular, 
the  disappointed  lover  may  boldly  return  and  face  her  again. 
The  chances  are  ten  to  one  he  will  find  himself — more  in  love 
than  ever ! 

Women  are  magicians,  No  wonder  they  were  burned  as  witches 
in  the  Middle  Ages. 


NATIONALITY  AND  LOVE 

Romantic  love — commonly  considered  immutable — not  only 
displays  countless  individual  variations  in  regard  to  duration  and 
degrees  of  intensity,  but  has  a  sort  of  "local  colour"  in  each 
country;  or,  to  keep  up  our  old  metaphor,  a  varying  clangtint, 
depending  on  the  greater  or  less  prominence  of  certain  "over- 
tones." 

To  describe  all  these  varieties  of  Love  would  require  a  separate 
volume.  Ajid  since  all  the  most  interesting  forms  of  the  romantic 
passion  are  to  be  met  with  in  France,  Italy,  Spain,  Germany, 
England,  and  America,  it  will  suffice  to  briefly  characterise  Love 
in  those  countries. 


266  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 


TRENCH  LOVE 

As  literary  luck  would  have  it,  the  subject  of  French  Love 
follows  naturally  upon  the  subject  of  the  last  chapter,  the  Remedia 
Amor  is. 

The  French  are  too  clever  a  nation  to  leave  to  individual  effort 
the  difficult  task  of  curing  the  mind  of  such  an  obstinate  thing  as 
Love.  All  the  papas  and  mammas  in  the  land  have  put  their 
heads  together  and  devised  two  methods  of  killing  Love  wholesale, 
compared  with  which  all  the  remedies  named  in  the  last  chapter 
are  mere  fly-bites. 

These  two  methods  are  Chaperonage  and  Parental  Choice,  as 
opposed  to  Courtship  and  Individual  Sexual  Selection. 

Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  there  is  in  the  midst  of  modern 
Europe  a  nation  which,  in  the  treatment  of  women,  Love,  and 
marriage,  stands  on  the  same  low  level  of  evolution  as  the  ancient, 
mediaeval,  and  Oriental  nations. 

This  is  not  a  theory,  but  a  fact  patent  to  all,  and  attested  by. 
the  best  English,  German,  and  French  authors. 

One  of  the  deepest  of  French  thinkers,  whose  eyes  were  opened 
by  travel  and  comparison,  De  Stendhal,  in  1842,  says  in  his  book 
De  I' Amour :  "  Pour  comprendre  cette  passion,  que  depuis  trente 
ans  la  peur  du  ridicule  cache  avec  tant  de  soin  parmi  nous,  il  faut 
en  parler  comme  d'une  maladie  " — "  To  understand  this  passion, 
which  during  the  last  thirty  years  has  been  concealed  among  us 
with  so  much  solicitude,  from  fear  of  ridicule,  it  is  necessary  to 
speak  of  it  as  a  malady." 

But  Stendhal  greatly  understates  the  case.  It  was  not  only 
within  thirty  years  from  the  time  when  he  wrote,  and  by  means 
of  ridicule,  that  the  French  had  tried  hard  to  kill  Love.  They 
have  never  really  emancipated  themselves  from  mediaeval  barbarism. 
Pure  Romantic  Love  between  two  young  unmarried  persons  has 
never  yet  flourished  in  France — because  it  has  never  been  allowed 
to  grow.  To-day,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Troubadours,  the  only 
form  of  Love  celebrated  in  French  plays  and  romances  is  the  form 
which  implies  conjugal  infidelity. 

"Marriage,  as  treated  in  the  old  French  epics,"  says  Ploss,  "is 
rarely  based  on  love ;"  the  woman  marries  for  protection,  the  man 
for  her  wealth  or  social  affiliations.  In  the  eighteenth  century 
girls  were  compelled  from  their  earliest  years  to  live  only  for 
appearance  sake  :  "  The  most  harmless  natural  enjoyment,  every 
childish  ebullition,  is  interdicted  as  improper.  Her  mother  denies 


FRENCH  LOVE  267 

her  the  expression  of  tender  emotion  as  too  bourgeois,  too  common. 
The  little  one  grows  up  in  a  dreary,  heartless  vacuum  ;  her  deeper 
feelings  remain  undeveloped.  .  .  Real  love  would  be  too  ordinary 
a  motive  of  marriage,  and  therefore  extremely  ridiculous.  It  is  not 
offered  her,  accordingly,  nor  does  she  feel  any." 

Heine  wrote  from  Paris  in  1837  that  "girls  never  fall  in  love 
in  this  country."  "  With  us  in  Germany,  as  also  in  England  and 
other  nations  of  Germanic  origin,  young  girls  are  allowed  the 
utmost  possible  liberty,  whereas  married  women  become  subjected 
to  the  strict  and  anxious  supervision  of  their  husbands. 

"  Here  in  France,  as  already  stated,  the  reverse  is  the  case : 
young  girls  remain  in  the  seclusion  of  a  convent  until  they  either 
marry  or  are  introduced  to  the  world  under  the  strict  eye  of  a 
relative.  In  the  world,  i.e.  in  the  French  salon,  they  always 
remain  silent  and  little  noticed,  for  it  is  neither  good  form  here  nor 
wise  to  make  love  to  an  unmarried  girl. 

"There  lies  the  difference.  We  Germans,  as  well  as  our 
Germanic  neighbours,  bestow  our  love  always  on  unmarried  girls, 
and  these  only  are  celebrated  by  our  poets  ;  among  the  French,  on 
the  other  hand,  married  women  only  are  the  object  of  love,  in  lifo 
as  well  as  in  literature." 

The  difficulty  of  becoming  acquainted  with  a  young  lady, 
Mr.  Hamerton  tells  us,  is  greatest  "  in  what  may  be  called  the 
'  respectable '  classes  in  country-towns  and  their  vicinities.  In 
Parisian  society  young  ladies  go  out  into  le  monde,  and  may  be 
seen  and  even  spoken  to  at  evening-parties." 

"  And  even  spoken  to  "  is  good,  is  very  good.  What  a  privilege 
for  the  young  men  !  The  iron  bars  which  formerly  separated 
them  from  the  young  ladies  have  actually  been  removed,  and  they 
are  allowed  to  speak  to  them — in  presence  of  a  heart-chilling, 
conversation-killing  dragon.  No  wonder  Parisian  society  is  so 
corrupt ! 

Mr.  Hamerton  has  given  in  Round  My  House  the  most  realistic 
and  fascinating  account  of  French  courtship  and  marringe-customs 
ever  written.  He  is  a  great  admirer  of  the  French,  always  ready 
to  excuse  their  foibles,  and  his  testimony  is,  therefore,  doubly 
valuable  as  that  of  an  absolutely  impartial  witness.  He  had  an 
opportunity  for  many  years  of  studying  French  provincial  life  with 
an  artist's  trained  faculties ;  and  here  are  a  few  sentences  culled 
from  his  descriptions  : — 

"  It  is  not  merely  difficult,  in  our  neighbourhood,  for  a  young 
man  in  the  respectable  classes  to  get  acquainted  with  a  young  lady, 
but  every  conceivable  arrangement  is  devised  to  make  it  absolutely 


268  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

impossible.  Balls  and  evening-parties  are  hardly  ever  given,  and 
when  they  are  given  great  care  is  taken  to  keep  young  men  out  of 
them,  and  young  marriageable  girls  either  dance  with  each  other 
or  with  mere  children." 

Whereas  in  England  "a  young  girl  may  go  where  she  likes, 
without  much  risk  to  her  good  name,"  a  French  girl  "  may  not 
cross  a  street  alone,  nor  open  a  book  which  has  not  been  examined, 
nor  have  an  opinion  about  anything."  "  The  French  ideal  of  a 
well-brought-up  young  lady  is  that  she  should  not  know  anything 
whatever  about  love  and  marriage,  that  she  should  be  both  innocent 
and  ignorant,  and  both  in  the  supreme  degree — both  to  a  degree 
which  no  English  person  can  imagine." 

"  The  young  men  are  not  to  blame;  they  would  be  ready  enough, 
perhaps,  to  fall  in  love  if  they  had  the  chance,  like  any  Englishman 
or  German,  but  the  respectable  parents  of  the  young  lady  take  care 
that  they  shall  not  have  the  chance  of  falling  in  love." 

The  only  opportunity  a  young  man  has  of  seeing  a  girl  is  at  a 
distance,  at  church  or  in  a  religious  procession.  Here  he  may  see 
her  face;  her  character  he  can  only  ascertain  through  gossip,  a 
lady  friend,  or  the  parish  priest.  It  is  much  more  respectable, 
however,  to  show  no  such  curiosity,  for  its  absence  implies  the 
absence  of  such  a  ridiculous  thing  as  Love.  "  There  is  nothing 
which  good  society  in  France  disapproves  of  so  much  as  the  passion 
of  Love,  or  anything  resembling  it."  "When  Ctelebs  asks  for  the 
hand  of  a  girl  he  has  seen  for  a  minute,  he  may  just  possibly  be  in 
love  with  her,  which  is  a  degrading  supposition ;  but  if  he  has 
never  seen  her,  you  cannot  even  suspect  him  of  a  sentiment  so 
unbecoming." 

There  is  but  one  way  for  the  young  man  to  gain  admission  to  a 
house  where  there  is  a  marriageable  young  lady  :  "He  must  first, 
through  a  third  party,  ask  to  marry  the  young  lady,  and,  if  her 
parents  consent,  he  will  then  be  admitted  to  see  her  and  speak  to 
her,  but  not  otherwise.  The  respectable  order  of  affairs  is  that 
the  offer  and  acceptance  should  precede  and  not  follow  court- 
ship." 

Would  it  be  possible  to  conceive  a  more  diabolically  ingenious 
social  machinery  for  massacring  Romantic  Love  en  gros  ? 

"  Marriages  in  France  are  generally  arranged  by  the  exercise  of 
reason  and  prudence,  rather  than  by  either  passion  or  affection." 
Mr.  Hamerton  gives  an  amusing  account  of  how  he  was  asked  to 
be  matrimonial  ambassador  by  a  young  man  who  had  never  seen 
the  girl  he  wanted  to  marry.  Mr.  Hamerton  obliged  the  young 
man,  but  was  told  by  the  mother  that  if  the  young  man  would 


FRENCH  LOVE  269 

wait  two  years  he  might  have  a  fair  chance,  provided  a  richer  or 
nobler  suitor  did  not  turn  up  in  the  meantime. 

Money  aid  Rank  versus  Love.  French  mammas  have  at  least 
one  virtue.  They  are  not  hypocrites. 

The  Countess  von  Bothmer,  who  lived  in  France  a  quarter  of  a 
century,  says  in  her  French  Home  Life  :  "  Where  we  so  ordinarily 
listen  to  what  we  understand  by  love — to  the  temptations  of  the 
young  heart  in  all  their  forms  (however  transitory),  to  our  individual 
impressions  and  our  own  opinions — the  French  consult  fitness  of 
relative  situation,  reciprocities  of  fortune  and  position,  and  har- 
monies of  family  intercourse." 

To  annihilate  the  last  resource  of  Love — elopement — the  Code 
Napoleon  forbids  all  marriages  without  either  the  consent  of  the 
father  and  mother,  or  proof  that  they  are  both  dead.  "  It  is  very 
troublesome  to  get  married  in  France ;  the  operation  is  surrounded 
by  difficulties  and  formalities  which  would  make  an  Englishman 
stamp  with  rage." 

Social  life,  of  course,  suffers  as  much  from  this  idiotic  system 
as  Romantic  Love.  French  hospitality  "  does  not  extend  beyond 
the  family  circle,"  we  are  informed  by  M.  Max  O'Rell,  who  also 
gives  this  amusing  instance  of  the  imbecility  or  mental  slavery 
(he  does  not  use  these  words)  produced  by  the  French  system  of 
education  and  chaperonage : — 

"I  remember  I  was  one  day  sitting  in  the  Champs  Elyse'es 
with  two  English  ladies.  Beside  us  was  a  young  French  girl  with 
her  father  and  mother.  The  person  on  the  right  of  papa  rose  and 
went  away,  and  we  heard  the  young  innocent  say  to  her  mother : 
1  Mamma,  may  I  go  and  sit  by  papa  1 '  It  was  a  baby  of  about 
eighteen  or  twenty.  Those  English  ladies  laugh  over  the  affair 
to  this  day." 

Boys  suffer  as  well  as  girls.  As  the  author  of  an  article  on 
"  Parisian  Psychology "  remarks :  "  There  are  no  mothers  in 
France ;  it  is  a  nation  of  '  mammas,'  who,  in  the  most  unlimited 
sense  of  the  word,  spoil  their  boys,  weaken  them  in  body  and 
soul,  dwarf  their  thought,  dry  their  hearts,  and  lower  them  to 
below  even  their  own  level,  hoping  thereby  to  rule  over  them 
through  life,  as  they  too  often  do.  Frenchwomen  having  been 
at  best  but  half-wives,  regard  their  children  as  a  sort  of  com- 
pensation for  what  they  have  themselves  not  had ;  and  after  the 
mischievous  fashion  of  weak  *  mammas/  prolong  babyhood  till  far 
into  mature  life." 

The  French,  in  fact,  are  a  nation  of  babies.  Their  puerile 
conceit,  which  prevents  them  from  learning  to  read  any  language 


270  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

but  their  own,  and  thus  finding  out  what  other  nations  think  of 
them,  is  responsible  in  part  for  the  mediaeval  barbarism  of  their 
matrimonial  arrangements.  The  Parisian  is  the  most  provincial 
animal  in  the  world.  In  any  other  metropolis — be  it  London, 
New  York,  Vienna,  or  Berlin — people  understand  and  relish 
whatever  is  good  in  literature,  art,  and  life,  be  it  English, 
American,  French,  German,  or  Italian.  But  the  Parisian  under- 
stands only  what  is  narrowly  and  exclusively  French.  And  this 
is  the  dictionary  definition  of  Provincialism. 

The  consequences  of  this  medievalism  and  provincialism  in 
modern  France  are  thus  eloquently  summed  up  by  a  writer  in  the 
Westminster  Review  (1877)  : — 

"  Such  education  as  girls  receive  is  not  only  not  a  preparation 
for  the  wedded  state,  it  is  a  positive  disqualification  for  it.  They 
are  not  taught  to  read,  they  are  not  taught  to  reason ;  they  are 
launched  into  life  without  a  single  intellectual  interest  The 
whole  effort  of  their  early  training  goes  to  fill  their  mind  with 
puerilities  and  superstitions.  As  regards  God,  they  are  instructed 
to  believe  in  relics  and  old  bones;  as  regards  man,  they  are 
instructed  to  believe  in  dress,  in  mannerisms,  and  coquetry. 
Their  love  of  appreciation,  after  being  enormously  developed,  is 
bottled  up  and  tied  down  until  a  husband  is  found  to  draw  the 
cork.  What  else,  then,  can  we  look  for  but  an  explosion  of 
frivolity  ?  Can  we  expect  that  such  a  provision  of  coquettishness 
will  be  reserved  for  the  husband's  exclusive  use  ?  He  will  be 
tired  of  it  in  three  months — unless  it  is  tired  of  him  before ;  and 
then  the  pent-up  waters  will  forsake  their  narrow  bed  and  overflow 
the  country  far  and  wide." 

No  wonder  Napoleon  remarked  that  "Love  does  more  harm 
than  good."  And  right  he  was,  most  emphatically,  for  the  only 
kind  of  Love  possible  in  France  does  infinite  harm.  It  poisons 
life  and  literature  alike. 

We  can  now  understand  the  fierceness  of  Dumas's  attacks  on 
mariages  de  convenance :  "The  manifest  deterioration  of  the 
race  touches  him  ;  it  does  not  touch  us.  Nor  do  we  at  all  realise 
the  next  to  impossibility  of  a  man  ever  marrying  for  love  in 
France.  There  are  those  who  have  tried  to  do  it,  but  they  can 
never  get  on  in  life ;  they  are  reputed  of  '  bad  example ' "  (St. 
James's  Gazette). 

And  now  we  come  upon  a  paradox  which  has  puzzled  a  great 
many  thinkers.  The  Countess  von  Bothmer,  while  deploring  the 
absence  of  Love  in  French  courtship,  endeavours  to  show  that 
domestic  happiness  and  conjugal  affection  are,  nevertheless,  not 


FRENCH  LOVE  271 

rare  in  France.  French  busoaiids  "are  ordinarily  with  their 
wives,  accompany  them  wherever  they  can,  and  share  their  friend- 
ships and  distractions."  Mr.  Hamerton  likewise  bears  witness 
that  French  girls  "  become  excellent  wives,  faithful,  orderly, 
dutiful,  contented,  and  economical.  They  all  either  love  their 
husbands,  or  conduct  themselves  as  if  they  did  so."  He  says  the 
notion  fostered  by  novels  "that  Frenchmen  are  always  occupied 
in  making  love  to  their  neighbours'  wives"  is  nonsense;  thai: 
there  is  no  more  adultery  than  elsewhere.  "There  exists  in 
foreign  countries,  and  especially  in  England,  a  belief  that  French- 
women are  very  generally  adulteresses.  The  origin  of  the  belief 
is  this, — the  manner  in  which  marriages  are  generally  managed 
in  France  leaves  no  room  for  interesting  love-stories.  Novelists 
and  dramatists  must  find  love-stories  somewhere,  and  so  they  have 
to  seek  for  them  in  illicit  intrigues." 

This  is  all  very  ingenious,  but  the  argument  is  not  conclusive. 
Even  granted  for  a  moment  that  Mr.  Hamerton  is  right  in  his 
defence  of  French  conjugal  life,  is  it  not  a  more  than  sufficient 
condemnation  of  the  French  system  of  "  courtship  "  that  one-half 
of  the  nation  are  prevented  from  reading  its  literature  because  it 
is  so  foul  and  filthy — because  Love  has  been  made  synonymous 
with  adultery  1 

But  Mr.  Hamerton's  assertion  loses  its  probability  when  viewed 
in  the  light  of  the  following  considerations.  He  himself  admits 
that  the  French  are  anxious  to  read  about  Love,  that  the  novelists 
and  dramatists  must  find  stories  of  Love  somewhere — mind  you, 
not  of  conjugal  but  of  Romantic  Love — and  the  Paris  Figaro  not 
long  ago  denounced  the  French  novelists  of  the  period  for  devoting 
their  stories  to  Love  almost  exclusively,  whereas  Balzac,  Dumas, 
Thackeray,  and  Scott,  at  least  introduced  various  other  matters  of 
interest.  Now  French  novels  have  the  largest  editions  of  any 
books  published ;  and  if  so  vast  an  interest  is  displayed  by  the 
French  in  reading  about  Love,  is  it  likely  that  their  interest  is 
purely  literary  ?  Certainly  not.  They  will  seek  it  in  real  life. 
And  in  real  life  it  can  only  be  found  in  one  sphere,  which  else- 
where is  protected  against  such  invasions,  by  the  young  being 
allowed  to  meet  one  another.  "  It  is  to  be  feared  that  they  who 
marry  where  they  do  not  love,  will  love  where  they  do  not  marry.' 
In  this  respect  human  nature  is  the  same  the  world  over.  The 
testimony  of  scores  of  unprejudiced  authors  on  this  head  cannot 
be  ignored. 

This,  however,  is  only  one  of  the  evils  following  from  the 
French  suppression  of  pre-matrimonial  Love.  The  parents  may  or 


272  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

may  not  suffer  through  conjugal  jealousy  and  infidelity,  one  thing 
is  certain, — that  the  children  suffer  from  it,  in  body  and  mind. 
It  is  leading  to  the  depopulation  of  France.  It  was  M.  Jules 
Rochard  who  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  "  France,  which  two 
centuries  ago  included  one-third  of  the  total  population  of  Europe, 
now  contains  but  one-tenth";  although  the  death-rate  is  smaller 
in  France  than  in  most  European  countries,  and  although  there 
has  been  a  gradual  increase  of  wealth  throughout  the  country. 

That  the  suppression  of  Romantic  Love  and  of  all  opportunities 
for  courtship  is  the  principal  cause  of  the  decline  of  France,  is 
apparent  from  the  fact  that  the  countries  in  which  population 
increases  most  rapidly — as  America  and  Great  Britain — are  those 
in  which  Romantic  Love  is  the  chief  motive  to  marriage. 

Romantic  Love  goes  by  complementary  qualities,  the  defects 
of  the  parents  neutralising  one  another  in  the  offspring ;  so  that 
the  children  who  are  the  issue  of  a  love-match  are  commonly  more 
beautiful  than  their  parents.  In  France  there  is  no  selection 
whatever,  except  with  reference  to  money  and  rank.  Not  even 
Health  is  considered,  the  sine  qua  non  of  Love  as  well  as  Beauty. 
Hence  the  absence  of  Love  in  France  has  led  to  the  almost 
absolute  absence  of  beauty.  And  it  would  be  nothing  short  of  a 
miracle  if  the  offspring  of  a  young  maiden,  still  in  her  teens,  and 
an  old  broken-down  sinner,  chosen  by  her  parents  for  his  wealth 
or  social  position,  were  any  different  from  the  puny,  hairy  men  and 
coarse-featured,  vulgar  women  that  make  up  the  bulk  of  the 
French  nation. 

In  Paris  one  does  occasionally  see  a  fine  figure  and  a  rather 
pretty  face,  but  they  almost  always  belong  to  the  lower  classes. 
As  the  lower  classes  allow  the  young  considerable  freedom,  it 
would  seem  as  if  beauty  in  this  class  ought  to  be  as  common  an 
article  as  in  England  or  the  United  States.  But  the  incapacity 
of  the  young  women  for  feeling  and  reciprocating  Love  neutralises 
these  opportunities.  For  of  what  use  is  it  for  a  man  to  feel  Love 
if  the  woman  invariably  bases  her  choice  on  money  1  This  matter 
is  most  clearly  brought  out  by  Mr.  Hamerton  : — 

"  Amongst  the  lower  classes,  the  peasantry  and  workmen  .  .  . 
girls  have  as  much  freedom  as  they  have  in  England.  The  great 
institution  of  the  parlement  gives  them  ample  opportunities  for 
becoming  acquainted  with  their  lovers ;  indeed  the  acquaintance, 
in  many  cases,  goes  further  than  is  altogether  desirable.  A 
peasant  girl  requires  no  parental  help  in  looking  after  her  own 
interests.  She  admits  a  lover  to  the  happy  state  of  parlement, 
which  means  that  he  has  a  right  to  talk  with  her  when  they 


FRENCH  LOVE  273 

meet,  and  to  call  upon  her,  dance  with  her,  etc.  The  lover  is 
always  eager  to  fix  the  wedding-day,  the  girl  is  not  so  eager.  She 
keeps  him  on  indefinitely  until  a  richer  one  appears,  on  which 
No.  1  has  the  mortification  of  seeing  himself  excluded  from  parle- 
ment,  whilst  another  takes  his  place.  In  this  way  a  clever  girl 
will  go  on  for  several  years,  amusing  herself  by  torturing  amorous 
swains,  until  at  length  a  sufficiently  big  fish  nibbles  at  the  bait, 
when  she  hooks  him  at  once,  and  takes  good  care  that  he  shall 
not  escape.  Nothing  can  be  more  pathetically  ludicrous  than  the 
condition  of  a  young  peasant  who  is  really  in  love,  especially  if  he 
is  able  to  write,  for  then  he  pours  forth  his  feelings  in  innumer- 
able letters  full  of  tenderness  and  complaint.  On  her  part  the 
girl  does  not  answer  the  letters,  and  has  not  the  slightest  pity  for 
the  unhappy  victim  of  her  charms.  After  seeing  a  good  deal  of 
such  love-affairs  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  in  humble 
life  young  men  do  really  very  often  feel 

"  'The  hope,  the  fear,  the  jealous  care, 
The  exalted  portion  of  the  pain 
And  power  of  love.' 

And  they  'wear  the  chain*  too.  Young  women,  on  the  other 
hand,  seem  only  to  amuse  themselves  with  all  this  simple-hearted 
devotion — 

'"And  mammon  wins  his  way  where  seraphs  might  despair.1 " 

Schopenhauer  pointed  out  that  the  French  lack  the  Gefiikl 
fur  das  Innige  —  the  tenderness  and  emotional  depth  which 
characterise  the  Germans  and  Italians.  It  is  this  that  accounts 
for  the  inability  of  the  French  to  appreciate  Love,  and  for  the  fact 
that  even  vice  is  coarser  in  France  than  elsewhere,  as  remarked  by 
Mr.  Lecky,  who,  in  his  History  of  European  Morals,  contrasts  "  the 
coarse,  cynical,  ostentatious  sensuality,  which  forms  the  most 
repulsive  feature  of  the  French  character,"  with  "the  dreamy, 
languid,  and  sesthetical  sensuality  of  the  Spaniard  or  Italian." 
And  it  remained  for  the  French  to  attempt  to  deify  vice  as  in  that 
over-rated  and  repulsive  story  of  Manon  Lescaut. 

Mme.  de  Stael,  who  suffered  so  much  from  the  provincialism 
(alias  patriotism)  of  her  countrymen,  saw  clearly  the  immorality 
of  the  French  system  of  marrying  girls  without  consulting  their 
choice.  Brandes  relates  the  following  anecdote  of  her:  "One 
day,  speaking  of  the  unnaturalness  of  marriages  arranged  by  the 
parents,  as  distinguished  from  those  in  which  the  young  girls 
choose  for  themselves,  she  exclaimed,  *  I  would  compel  my  daughter 
to  marry  the  man  of  her  choice  1 ' " 


274  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

An  attempt  is  being  made  at  present  in  Paris  to  introduce  tl.e 
Anglo-American  feminine  spirit  into  society.  The  word  flirtcr  has 
been  adopted,  and  the  thing  itself  experimented  with.  But  the 
French  girl  does  not  know  how  to  draw  the  line  between  coquetry 
and  flirtation.  She  needs  a  better  education  before  she  can  flirt 
properly.  This  education  the  Government  is  trying  to  give  her  at 
present ;  but  it  meets  with  stubborn  resistance  from  the  priests, 
and  from  the  old  notion  that  intellectual  culture  is  fatal  to  feminine 
charms  and  the  capacity  for  affection.  If  this  book  should  accom- 
plish nothing  else  than  prove  that  without  intellect  there  can  be 
no  deep  Love,  it  will  not  have  been  written  in  vain. 

ITALIAN   LOVE 

In  Italy,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  women  were  kept  in  as 
strict  seclusion  as  to-day  in  France ;  and  with  the  same  results, — 
conjugal  infidelity  and  a  great  lack  of  Personal  Beauty,  as  noted 
by  Montaigne,  who  remarks  at  the  same  time  that  it  was  regarded 
as  something  quite  extraordinary  if  a  young  lady  was  seen  in 
public. 

Byron  wrote  in  1817  that  "Jealousy  is  not  the  order  of  the 
day  in  Venice  " ;  and  that  the  Italians  "  marry  for  their  parents, 
and  love  for  themselves." 

In  Crowe  and  Cavalcaselle's  Life  and  Times  of  Titian  we  read 
that  "  Though  chroniclers  have  left  us  to  guess  what  the  state  of 
society  may  have  been  in  Venice  at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  they  give  us  reason  to  believe  that  it  was  deeply  influ- 
enced by  Oriental  habit.  The  separation  of  men  from  women  in 
churches,  the  long  seclusion  of  unmarried  females  in  convents  or  in 
the  privacy  of  palaces,  were  but  the  precursors  to  marriages  in 
which  husbands  were  first  allowed  to  see  their  wives  as  they  came 
in  state  to  dance  round  the  wedding  supper- table." 

But  even  at  this  early  period  when  women  were  still  treated  as 
babies  unable  to  take  care  of  themselves,  we  find  at  least  one 
trace  of  the  Gallantry  which  is  so  essential  an  element  in  modern 
love.  It  was  customary  for  the  men,  on  festive  occasions,  to 
stand  behind  their  wives'  chairs  at  table  and  serve  them. 

Extremely  ungallant,  on  the  other  hand,  are  some  of  the  Italian 
proverbs  about  women  of  this  and  other  periods.  "  A  woman  is 
like  a  horse-chestnut — beautiful  outside,  worthless  inside."  "  Two 
women  and  a  goose  make  a  market."  "  Married  man — bird  in 
cage."  "  In  buying  a  horse  and  taking  a  wife  shut  your  eyes  and 
commend  your  soul  to  heaven." 


ITALIAN  LOVE  275 

Her  exuberant  health  makes  an  Italian  woman  naturally  prone 
to  Love ;  but  though  she  falls  in  love  most  readily,  the  passion  is 
apt  to  be  fugitive  and  superficial.  She  rarely  loves  with  the 
passionate  ardour  of  a  Spanish  woman.  "What  we  notice  especi- 
ally in  Italian  women,"  says  Schweiger-Lerchenfeld,  "  is  the 
absence  of  that  alternation  between  those  extremes  of  tempera- 
ment which  are  so  conspicuous  in  other  Southern  women.  Energy 
is  almost  as  unknown  to  her  as  the  moral  power  of  resignation 
and  sacrifice.  Hence  it  can  hardly  surprise  us  that  Italian  history 
records  so  few  heroic  women  or  pious  female  martyrs.  Italy  has 
produced  neither  a  Jeanne  d'Arc  nor  an  Elizabeth  of  Thuringia ; 
the  crowns  were  too  oppressive  to  be  borne  by  these  beauties,  and 
life  too  enchanting  for  them  to  invite  to  tragic  self-sacrifice." 

Probably  the  most  realistic,  and  certainly  the  most  fascinating, 
account  of  Italian  love-making  ever  given  is  to  be  found  in  Mr. 
Howells's  Venetian  Life.  As  it  is  too  long  to  quote,  I  will 
attempt  to  condense  it,  though  at  some  sacrifice  of  that  literary 
**  bouquet,"  as  an  epicure  would  say,  which  constitutes  the  unique 
charm  of  Mr.  Howells's  style  : — 

"  The  Venetians  have  had  a  practical  and  strictly  businesslike 
way  of  arranging  marriages  from  the  earliest  times.  The  shrewdest 
provision  has  always  been  made  for  the  dower  and  for  the  good  of 
the  state ;  private  and  public  interest  being  consulted,  the  small 
matters  of  affection  have  been  left  to  the  chances  of  association. 

"Herodotus  relates  that  the  Assyrian  Veneti  sold  their 
daughters  at  auction  to  the  highest  bidder;  and  the  fair  being 
thus  comfortably  placed  in  life,  the  hard-favoured  were  given  to 
whomsoever  would  take  them,  with  such  dower  as  might  be  con- 
sidered a  reasonable  compensation.  The  auction  was  discontinued 
in  Christian  times,  but  marriage  contracts  still  partook  of  the 
form  of  a  public  and  half-mercantile  transaction. 

"These  passionate,  headlong  Italians  look  well  to  the  main 
chance  before  they  leap  into  matrimony,  and  you  may  be  sure 
Todaro  knows,  in  black  and  white,  what  the  Biondina  has  to  her 
fortune  before  he  weds  her." 

"  With  the  nobility  and  with  the  richest  commoners  marriage 
is  still  greatly  a  matter  of  contract,  and  is  arranged  without  much 
reference  to  the  principals,  though  it  is  now  scarcely  probable  in 
any  case  that  they  have  not  seen  each  other.  But  with  all  other 
classes,  except  the  poorest,  who  cannot  or  will  not  seclude  the 
youth  of  either  sex  from  each  other,  and  with  whom,  consequently, 
romantic  contrivance  and  subterfuge  would  be  superfluous,  love  is 
made  to-day  in  Venice  as  in  the  Capa  y  cspada  comedies  of  the 


276  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Spaniards,  and  the  business  is  carried  on  with  all  the  cumbrous 
machinery  of  confidants,  billets-doux,  and  stolen  interviews." 

The  "  operatic  method  of  courtship  "  thence  resulting  commonly 
assumes  this  form  : — 

"They  follow  that  beautiful  blonde,  who,  marching  demurely 
in  front  of  the  gray-in  oustached  papa  and  the  fat  mamma,  after 
the  fashion  in  Venice,  is  electrically  conscious  of  pursuit.  They 
follow  during  the  whole  evening,  and,  at  a  distance,  softly  follow 
her  home,  where  the  burning  Todaro  photographs  the  number  of 
the  house  upon  the  sensitised  tablets  of  his  soul.  This  is  the  first 
step  in  love  :  he  has  seen  his  adored  one,  and  she  knows  that  he 
loves  her  with  an  inextinguishable  ardour." 

The  next  step  consists  in  his  frequenting  the  caffe,  where  she 
goes  with  her  parents,  and  feasting  his  eyes  on  her  beauty.  After 
some  time  he  may  possibly  get  a  chance  to  speak  a  few  words  to 
her  under  her  balcony  ;  or,  what  is  more  likely,  he  will  bribe  her 
servant-maid  to  bring  her  a  love-letter.  Or  else  he  goes  to  church 
to  admire  her  at  a  convenient  distance. 

"  It  must  be  confessed  that  if  the  Biondina  is  not  pleased  with 
his  looks,  his  devotion  must  assume  the  character  of  an  intolerable, 
bore  to  her;  and  that  to  see  him  everywhere  at  her  heels — to 
behold  him  leaning  against  the  pillar  near  which  she  kneels  at 
church,  the  head  of  his  stick  in  his  mouth,  and  his  attitude  care- 
fully taken  with  a  view  to  captivation — to  be  always  in  deadly 
fear  lest  she  shall  meet  him  in  promenade,  or  turning  round  at 
the  caffe  encounter  his  pleading  gaze — that  all  this  must  drive  the 
Biondina  to  a  state  bordering  upon  blasphemy  and  finger-nails. 
Ma,  come  si  fa  ?  Ci  vuol  pazienza  ?  This  is  the  sole  course  open 
to  ingenuous  youth  in  Venice,  where  confessed  and  unashamed 
acquaintance  between  young  people  is  extremely  difficult ;  and  so 
this  blind  pursuit  must  go  on  till  the  Biondiua's  inclinations  are 
at  last  laboriously  ascertained."  Then  follow  the  inquiries  as  to 
her  dowry,  after  which  nothing  remains  but  "  to  demand  her  in 
marriage  of  her  father,  and  after  that  to  make  her  acquaintance" 

Topsy-turvy  as  this  last  arrangement  may  seem  to  Anglo- 
American  notions,  here  at  least  Love  has  some  chance  to  bring 
about  real  Sexual  Selection,  for  a  Southerner's  passions  are  momen- 
tarily inflamed,  and  the  Italian  Cupid  needs  but  a  moment  to  fix 
his  choice.  And  what  distinguishes  Italy  still  more  favourably 
from  France  is  that,  whereas  the  French  consider  Love  ridiculous, 
and  have  made  the  most  ingenious  contrivances  for  annihilating  it, 
the  Italians  worship  it,  revel  in  it,  and  are  inclined  rather  to  make 
too  many  concessions  to  it  than  to  ignore  it. 


SPANISH  LOVE  277 

The  result  is  patent  to  all  eyes.  For  every  attractive  French- 
woman there  are  to-day  a  hundred  beautiful  Italians.  And  were 
Anglo-American  methods  of  courtship  introduced  in  Italy,  beauty 
would  again  be  doubled  in  amount.  It  must  not  be  forgotten, 
however,  that  Love,  as  a  beautifier  of  mankind,  has  in  Italy  very 
strong  allies  in  the  balmy  air  and  sunshine,  tempting  to  constant 
outdoor  life,  which  mellows  the  complexion,  brightens  the  eyes, 
and  fills  out  the  figure  to  those  full  yet  elegant  proportions  which 
instantaneously  arouse  the  romantic  passion. 

SPANISH   LOVE 

Spanish  veins  contain  more  Oriental  blood  than  those  of  any 
other  European  nation ;  and  to  the  present  day  Eastern  methods 
of  treating  women  cast  their  shadow  on  Spanish  life.  But  the 
shadow  is  so  light,  and  so  much  mitigated  by  the  rosy  hue  of 
romance,  that  the  "local  colour"  of  Love  in  Spain  presents  an 
unusually  fascinating  spectacle,  which  countless  literary  artists 
have  attempted  to  depict. 

During  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  the  Oriental 
shadow  was  much  darker,  and  kept  the  women  iu  extreme  subjec- 
tion and  ignorance.  "  Their  life,"  says  Professor  Scherr,  speaking 
even  of  the  queens,  "  passed  away  in  a  luxurious  tedium  which 
dulled  the  sentiments  to  the  point  of  idiocy.  They  were  only 
crowned  slaves.  As  an  instance  of  their  absolute  deprivation  of 
liberty  may  be  cited  the  case  of  Elizabeth,  wife  of  Philip  II.,  who, 
when  in  1565  she  went  to  Bayonne  to  meet  her  mother,  had  to 
wait  three  days  before  the  gates  of  Burgos  before  it  was  possible 
to  ascertain  the  king's  decision  whether  the  queen  should  pass 
through  the  city  or  around  it." 

"  Women  of  rank,"  he  continues,  "  lived  iu  a  seclusion  border- 
ing on  that  of  a  convent,  if  not  surpassing  it.  For  nuns  were 
at  least  allowed  to  speak  to  male  visitors  behind  bars,  whereas 
married  women  were  strictly  forbidden  to  receive  the  visit  of  a 
man,  except  with  the  special  permission  of  the  husband.  And 
only  during  the  first  year  of  their  wedded  life  were  they  allowed 
to  frequent  public  drives  in  open  carriages  by  the  side  of  theii 
husband ;  subsequently  they  were  only  allowed  to  go  out  in  closed 
carriages.  Of  cosy  family  life  not  a  trace.  .  .  .  Even  the  table 
did  not  unite  the  husband  and  wife ;  the  master  took  his  meai 
alone,  while  his  wife  and  children  sat  respectfully  on  the  floor  on 
carpets,  with  their  legs  crossed  in  Oriental  fashion. 

"  The  poor  women,  excluded  from  every  refined  social  diversion, 


278  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

were  confined  to  manual  work,  gossip  with  their  duennas,  mechani 
cal  praying,  playing  with  their  rosaries,  and — intriguing.  For  the 
greater  the  subjection  of  women,  the  more  does  their  cunning 
grow,  the  more  passionate  becomes  their  desire  to  avenge  them- 
selves on  their  tyrants.  The  Spaniards  found  this  out  to  their 
cost.  The  most  inexorable  spirit  of  revenge,  all  the  parade  of 
'Spanish  honour,'  bordering  in  its  excess  on  clownishness,  could 
not  prevent  the  Spanish  dames  from  loving  and  being  loved." 

In  course  of  time  this  Oriental  despotism,  with  its  fatal  con- 
sequences to  conjugal  fidelity — as  in  France — has  been  greatly 
mitigated  in  Spain.  In  Pepys's  Diary ,  1667,  we  read  of  an 
informant  who  told  the  writer  "of  their  wooing  [in  Spain]  by 
serenades  at  the  window,  and  that  their  friends  do  always  make 
the  match ;  but  yet  they  have  opportunities  to  meet  at  masse  at 
church,  and  there  they  make  love." 

In  an  interesting  book  on  Spain,  written  almost  two  and  a 
quarter  centuries  after  Pepys's  Diary — Mr.  Lathrop's  Spanish 
Vistas — we  still  read  concerning  this  ecclesiastic  Love-making,  in 
the  Seville  Cathedral :  "  Every  door  was  guarded  by  a  squad  of 
the  decrepit  army,  so  that  entrance  there  became  a  horror.  These 
sanctuary  beggars  serve  a  double  purpose,  however.  The  black- 
garbed  Sevillan  ladies,  who  are  perpetually  stealing  in  and  out 
noiselessly  under  cover  of  their  archly-draped  lace  veils — losing 
themselves  in  the  dark,  incense-laden  interior,  or  emerging  from 
confession  into  the  daylight  glare  again — are  careful  to  drop  some 
slight  conscience-money  into  the  palms  that  wait.  Occasionally, 
by  pre-arrangement,  one  of  these  beggars  will  convey  into  the 
hand  that  passes  him  a  silver  piece,  a  tightly-folded  note  from 
some  clandestine  lover.  It  is  a  convenient  underground  mail,  and 
I  am  afraid  the  venerable  church  innocently  shelters  a  good  many 
little  transactions  of  this  kind." 

How  greatly  the  facilities  for  falling  in  love  and  for  making 
love  have  been  increased  in  modern  Spain  is  vividly  brought  out 
in  the  following  citation  from  Schweiger-Lerchenfeld  regarding  the 
scenes  to  be  witnessed  every  evening  on  the  crowded  promenade 
or  Rambla  at  Barcelona : — 

"  Are  these  elegantly-attired  ramblers  one  and  all  suitors,  since 
they  put  no  limit  nor  restraint  on  their  whispered  flatteries  ?  No, 
that  is  simply  the  custom  in  Barcelona.  The  women  and  girls 
are  beautiful,  and  though  they  are  well  aware  of  it,  they  neverthe- 
less allow  their  charms  to  be  whispered  in  their  ears  hundreds  of 
times  every  evening — a  freedom  of  intercourse  which  is  only 
possible  on  Spanish  soil.  .  .  .  And  thus  one  of  these  adored 


SPANISH  LOVE  279 

beauties  walks  up  and  down  in  the  glare  of  the  lamps,  and  sweet 
music  is  wafted  to  her  ears :  *  Your  beauty  dazzles  me/  whispers 
one  voice ;  and  another,  '  Happiness  and  anguish  your  eyes  are 
burning  into  my  soul.'  One  compliments  the  chosen  one  on  her 
hair,  another  on  her  figure,  a  third  on  her  graceful  gait.  Young 
adorers  feel  a  thrill  running  down  their  whole  body  if  her  mantilla 
only  touches  them;  while  mature  lovers  are  contented  with  nothing 
less  than  a  pressure  of  the  hand.  It  is  a  picture  that  is  possible, 
conceivable  only  in  Spain." 

The  same  writer  quotes  some  specimens  of  Spanish  Love-songs, 
one  of  which  may  be  transferred  to  this  page — 

"Echarae,  nifia  bonita, 
Lagrimas  en  tu  panuelo. 
Y  los  llevare  a  Madrid 
Que  los  engarce  un  platero.* 

"  Show  me,  my  little  charmer,  the  tear  in  your  handkerchief;  to 
Madrid  will  I  take  it  and  have  it  set  by  a  jeweller." 

What  a  contrast  between  this  modern  complimentary  and 
poetic  form  of  Gallantry  and  the  form  prevalent  in  the  good  old 
times  when  lovers  endeavoured  to  win  a  maiden's  favour  by  flagel- 
lating themselves  under  her  window  until  the  blood  ran  down 
their  backs ;  and  when,  as  Scherr  adds,  "  it  was  regarded  as  the 
surest  sign  of  supreme  gallantry  if  some  of  the  blood  bespattered 
the  clothes  of  the  beauty  to  whom  this  crazy  act  of  devotion  was 
addressed ! " 

Nevertheless,  the  Spanish  still  have  much  to  learn  from  Eng- 
land and  America  regarding  the  proper  methods  of  Courtship ;  for, 
according  to  a  writer  in  Macmillan's  Magazine  (1874),  the  un- 
married maiden  of  the  higher  classes,  "like  her  humbler  sister, 
can  never  have  the  privilege  of  seeing  her  lover  in  private,  and 
very  rarely,  indeed,  if  ever,  is  he  admitted  into  the  sala  where 
she  is  sitting.  He  may  contrive  to  get  a  few  minutes'  chat  with 
her  through  the  barred  windows  of  her  sala  ;  but  when  a  Spaniard 
leads  his  wife  from  the  altar,  he  knows  no  more  of  her  character, 
attainments,  and  disposition  than  does  the  parish  priest  who 
married  them,  and  perhaps  not  so  much." 

In  one  respect  Spanish  lovers  have  a  great  advantage  over  their 
unfortunate  colleagues  in  France.  There  marriage  is  impossible 
without  parental  consent,  whereas  in  Spain  a  law  exists  concerning 
which  the  writer  just  quoted  says : — 

"Should  a  Spanish  lad  and  lassie  become  attached  to  one 
another,  and  the  parents  absolutely  forbid  the  match,  and  refuse 
their  daughter  liberty  and  permission  to  marry,  the  lover  has  his 


280  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

remedy  at  law.  He  has  but  to  make  a  statement  of  the  facts 
on  paper,  and  deposit  it,  signed  and  attested,  with  the  alcalde  or 
mayor  of  the  township  in  which  the  lady's  parents  dwell.  The 
alcalde  then  makes  an  order,  giving  the  young  man  the  right  of 
free  entry  into  the  house  in  question,  within  a  certain  number  of 
days,  for  the  purpose  of  wooing  and  carrying  off  his  idol.  The 
parents  dare  not  interfere  with  the  office  of  the  alcalde,  and  the 
lady  is  taken  to  her  lover's  arms.  From  that  moment  he,  and  he 
alone,  is  bound  to  provide  for  her :  by  his  own  act  and  deed  she 
has  become  his  property."  Should  he  prove  false  "  the  law  comes 
upon  him  with  all  its  force,  and  he  is  bound  to  maintain  her,  in 
every  way,  as  a  wife,  under  pain  of  punishment." 

Thus  a  Spanish  girl  is  protected  against  perfidious  lovers  as 
well  as  is  an  English  and  American  girl  through  the  possibility  of 
suing  for  breach  of  promise.  If  the  short  stories  told  in  Don 
Quixote  may  be  taken  as  examples,  faithless  lovers  were  very 
common  in  Spain  at  that  time ;  which,  doubtless,  accounts  for  the 
origin  of  this  law.  The  girls  on  their  part  erred  by  yielding  too 
easily  to  the  promises  of  the  men;  though  they  are  partially 
excused  by  the  great  strength  of  their  passions. 

In  his  work  on  Suicide,  Professor  Morselli  has  statistics  show- 
ing that  more  women  take  their  life  in  Spain  than  in  any  other 
country;  and  he  attributes  this  to  the  force  of  their  passions, 
which  is  greater  than  in  Italy,  where  the  number  of  female  sui- 
cides is  considerably  lower. 

Thus  Love  has  a  more  favourable  ground  in  Spain  than  either 
in  Italy  or  in  France,  notwithstanding  certain  restrictions.  And 
the  result  shows  itself  in  this,  that  all  tourists  unite  in  singing  the 
praises  of  Spanish  Beauty.  Spain,  indeed,  unites  in  itself  all  the 
conditions  favourable  to  Beauty :  a  climate  tempting  to  outdoor 
life ;  a  considerable  amount  of  intellectual  culture  and  sesthetic 
refinement;  a  mixture  of  nationalities,  fusing  ethnic  peculiarities 
into  a  harmonious  whole ;  and  Love,  which  fuses  individual  com- 
plementary qualities  into  a  harmonious  ensemble  of  beautiful 
features,  graceful  figure,  amiable  disposition,  and  refined  manners. 

GERMAN   LOVE 

When  Tacitus  penned  his  famous  certificate  of  good  moral 
character  for  the  Germans  of  his  time,  he  little  suspected  how 
many  thousand  times  it  would  be  quoted  by  the  grateful  and 
proud  descendants  of  those  early  Teutons,  and  pinned  to  the  lapels 
of  their  coats  as  a  sort  of  prize  medal  in  the  competition  for 


GERMAN  LOVE  281 

ancestral  virtue.  The  more  candid  historians,  however,  admit 
that  the  Roman  historian  somewhat  overdrew  his  picture  in  order 
to  teach  his  own  profligate  countrymen  a  sort  of  Sunday  school 
lesson,  by  the  vivid  contrast  presented  by  these  inhabitants  of  the 
northern  virgin  forests.  x 

There  is  no  question  that  women  were  held  in  considerable 
honour  among  these  early  Germans.  Many  of  them  served  as 
priestesses,  and  adultery  was  punished  with  death.  Polygamy 
existed  only  among  the  chiefs,  and  even  among  them  it  was  not 
common.  Yet  the  men  did  not  treat  the  women  as  their  equals. 
"  They  had  more  duties  than  privileges,"  says  Schweiger-Lerchen- 
feld.  Their  husbands  were  addicted  to  excessive  drinking  or 
gambling  when  not  engaged  in  war  or  the  chase,  leaving  the  hard 
domestic  and  field  labour  to  the  women  :  and  all  this  cannot  have 
tended  to  refine  the  women. 

"  Marriage  in  the  old  Germanic  times,"  says  Ploss,  "  was  mostly 
an  affair  of  expediency.  ...  In  the  choice  of  a  wife  beauty  was  of 
less  moment  than  property  and  good  social  antecedents.  Love 
before  the  betrothal  rarely  occurs." 

Gustav  Freytag,  in  his  Pictures  of  German  Life,  during  the 
fifteenth,  sixteenth,  and  seventeenth  centuries,  remarks  :  "  Marriage 
was  considered  by  our  ancestors  less  as  a  union  of  two  lovers  than 
as  an  institution  replete  with  duties  and  rights,  not  only  of  married 
people  towards  one  another,  but  also  towards  their  relatives,  as  a 
bond  uniting  two  corporate  bodies.  .  .  .  Therefore  in  the  olden 
time  the  choice  of  husband  and  wife  was  always  an  affair  of  im- 
portance to  the  relatives  on  both  sides,  so  that  a  German  wooing 
from  the  oldest  times,  even  until  the  last  century,  had  the  appear- 
ance of  a  business  transaction,  which  was  carried  out  with  great 
regard  to  suitability." 

And  a  business  transaction  it  is,  unfortunately,  to  the  present 
day,  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases.  A  certain  amount  of  dower  or 
property  on  the  bride's  part  is  the  first  and  most  essential  requisite. 
Second  in  importance  is  the  desirability  of  not  descending  even  a 
step  in  the  social  ladder,  though  an  extra  lump  of  gold  commonly 
suffices  to  pull  down  social  Pride  to  a  lower  level.  Health,  temper, 
Personal  Beauty,  and  mutual  suitability — these  are  the  trifles 
which,  other  things  being  equal,  come  in  as  a  third  consideration. 
And  thus  is  the  order  of  Sexual  Selection,  as  ordained  by  Love, 
commonly  reversed. 

What  would  an  English  or  American  youth  of  twenty-two  say 
to  his  father  if  the  latter  should  undertake  to  write  to  all  his 
relatives,  asking  them  to  look  about  for  an  eligible  partner  for  his 


282  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

son,  and  capping  the  climax  by  starting  himself  on  a  trip  in  search 
of  a  bride  for  his  son  1  Would  he  accept  without  a  murmur  the 
girl  thus  found,  and  would  an  English  or  American  girl  thus  allow 
herself  to  be  given  away  like  a  cat  in  a  bag,  not  knowing  whether 
she  was  going  ?  I  have  seen  several  such  cases  with  my  own  eyes. 
One  of  them  was  most  pathetic.  For  when  the  blooming  bride,  a 
sweet  and  refined  girl,  was  introduced  to  the  bridegroom  selected 
for  her  by  her  parents — a  repulsive-looking  brute,  twice  her  age — 
she  conceived  a  perfect  loathing  for  him,  and  almost  wept  out  her 
eyes  before  the  wedding-day.  But  the  man  was  rich,  and  that 
settled  the  matter. 

What  aggravated  this  outrage  was  the  fact  that  the  bride's 
father  also  was  rich.  And  herein,  in  fact,  lies  the  canker  of  the 
German  system.  Money  is  such  a  comfortable  thing  to  have  that 
it  is  useless  to  preach  against  it.  There  are  money- marriages 
enough  in  England  and  America.  But  in  these  countries  it  is 
generally  considered  sufficient  if  one  party  has  the  money.  Not 
so  in  Germany.  It  is  not  so  much  the  comfort  ensured  by  a 
certain  amount  of  money  that  is  aimed  at  as  the  superior  social 
influence  ensured  by  a  large  amount  of  wealth.  Hence  the  rich 
marry  the  rich,  regardless  of  other  consequences,  and  poor 
Cupid  is  left  shivering  in  the  cold.  So  that,  after  all,  the  silly 
pride  of  social  position  is  a  greater  enemy  of  Eomantic  Love  than 
money. 

And  the  consequences  of  such  a  matrimonial  system  1  They 
have  been  most  eloquently  set  forth  by  the  blind  old  philosopher, 
Dr.  Duhring : — 

"  The  amalgamation  of  fortunes,  and  the  resulting  enervating 
luxury  of  living,  are  the  ruling  matrimonial  motives ;  and  the  want 
of  mutual  adaptation  of  the  individuals  becomes  the  cause  of  the 
degenerate  appearance  of  the  offspring.  The  loathsome  products 
of  such  marriages  then  walk  about  as  ugly  embodiments  and 
witnesses  of  such  a  degraded  system  of  legalised  prostitution 
(Kuppelwirthschafi).  They  bear  the  stamp  of  incongruity  on  body 
and  mind  ;  for  their  appearance  shows  them  to  be  the  offspring  of 
disharmonious  parents,  blindly  associated,  or  even,  in  many  cases, 
of  parents  who  themselves  are  already  products  of  this  new  matri- 
monial method.  This  degeneracy  necessarily  continues  from  one 
generation  to  another,  and  in  this  manner  maltreated  Nature 
avenges  herself  by  leading  to  personal  decrepitude  and  the  forma- 
tion of  a  new  sort  of  idiocy." 

"It  is  true,"  he  adds,  "that  love  is  not  an  infallible  sign  of 
mutual  suitability ;  but  when  it  is  absent,  or  even  replaced  by 


GERMAN  LOVE  283 

aversion,  it  is  certain  that  it  is  useless  to  expect  a  specially 
harmonious  composition  of  the  offspring." 

Is  this  one  of  the  reasons  why  Personal  Beauty  is  so  rare, 
comparatively,  in  Germany? 

But  Individual  Preference  is  not  the  only  element  of  Love 
which  thus  suffers  in  Germany  through  false  Pride  and  parental 
tyranny.  Gallantry  is  another  factor  which  needs  mending. 
German  women  are  sweet  and  amiable.  In  fact,  they  are  too 
sweet  and  good-natured.  They  have  spoiled  the  men,  who  in  con- 
sequence are  excessively  selfish  in  their  relations  to  women — the 
most  selfish  men  in  the  world,  outside  of  Turkey  or  China.  True, 
the  German  officer  in  a  ballroom  seems  to  be  the  very  essence  of 
officious  Gallantry.  But  his  motives  are  too  transparently 
Ovidian :  it  is  not  true  Anglo- American  politeness  of  the  heart 
that  inspires  his  conduct.  He  is  either  after  forbidden  sweets  or 
parading  his  uniform  and  his  vanity.  Take  the  same  man  and 
watch  him  at  home.  His  wife  has  to  get  him  his  chair,  move  it 
up  to  the  fire,  bring  him  his  slippers,  put  the  coffee  in  his  hand, 
and  do  errands  for  him.  When  he  goes  out  she  puts  on  his  over- 
coat and  buttons  it  up  carefully  for  him  as  if  he  were  a  helpless 
big  baby.  This  would  be  all  very  well — for  why  should  not 
women  be  gallant  too  ? — if  he  would  only  retaliate.  But  he  never 
dreams  of  it.  Even  if  it  comes  to  a  task  which  calls  for  masculine 
muscular  power — the  carrying  of  bundles,  etc. — he  makes  the 
wife  do  it.  He  is,  in  fact,  matrimonially  considered,  not  only  a 
big  baby  but  also  a  big  brute,  the  very  incarnation  of  masculine 
selfishness. 

In  former  centuries  it  was  customary  in  Germany,  as  it  is  now 
with  us,  for  women  to  bow  first  to  men.  The  modern  German 
has  reversed  this.  Woman  has  no  right  to  bow  until  her  lord 
and  superior  has  invited  her  to  do  so  by  doffing  his  hat. 

The  German  girl,  says  the  Countess  von  Bothmer  in  German 
Home  Life,  "  is  taught  that  to  be  womanly  she  must  be  helpless, 
to  be  feminine  she  must  be  feeble,  to  endear  herself  she  must  be 
dependent,  to  charm  she  must  cling."  "  To  keep  carefully  to  the 
sheep-walk,  to  applaud  in  concert  and  condemn  in  chorus,  is  the 
only  behaviour  that  can  be  tolerated."  "  They  have  one  bugbear 
and  one  object  of  idolatry,  these  monotonous  ladies, — a  fetish 
which  they  worship  under  the  name  of  Mode ;  a  monster  between 
public  opinion  and  Mrs.  Grundy.  To  say  a  thing  is  not  *  Mode ' 
here,  is  to  condemn  it  as  if  by  all  the  laws  of  Media  and  Persia. 
It  is  not  her  centre  [sic],  but  the  system  of  her  social  education, 
that  renders  the  German  woman  so  hopelessly  provincial." 


284  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Of  course  it  is  the  men  who  are  responsible  for  this  social  edu- 
cation and  this  feminine  ideal  of  absolute  dependence.  It  suits 
their  selfish  pleasure  to  be  worshipped  and  obeyed  by  the  women 
without  any  efforts  at  gallant  retaliation  on  their  part. 

A  native  writer  tells  us  that  "a  true  German  philosophises 
occasionally  while  he  embraces  his  sweetheart ;  while  kissing  even, 
theories  will  sprout  in  his  mind." 

No  wonder,  therefore,  that  one  of  the  German  metaphysicians, 
Fichte,  should  have  made  a  sophistic  attempt  to  reduce  masculine 
selfishness  to  a  system.  He  proves  to  his  own  satisfaction  that  it 
is  woman's  duty  to  sacrifice  herself  in  man's  behalf;  while  man, 
on  his  part,  has  no  such  obligations.  His  reasoning  is  too  elaborate 
to  quote  in  full ;  but  is  too  amusingly  naive  to  be  omitted,  so  I 
will  translate  the  summary  of  it  given  by  Kuno  Fischer  in  his 
History  of  Philosophy  : — 

"  What  woman's  natural  instincts  demand  is  self-abandonment 
to  a  man ;  she  desires  this  abandonment  not  for  her  own  sake, 
but  for  the  man's  sake ;  she  gives  herself  to  him,  for  him.  Now 
abandoning  oneself  for  another  is  self-sacrifice,  and  self-sacrifice 
from  an  instinctive  impulse  is  LOVE.  Therefore  love  is  a  kind  of. 
instinctive  impulse  which  the  sexual  instinct  in  woman  necessarily 
and  involuntarily  assumes.  She  feels  the  necessity  of  loving.  .  .  . 
This  impulse  is  peculiar  to  woman  alone ;  woman  alone  loves  [! ! !] ; 
only  through  woman  does  love  appear  among  mankind.  .  .  .  The 
woman's  life  should  disappear  in  the  man's  without  a  remnant,  and 
it  is  this  relation  that  is  so  beautifully  and  correctly  indicated  in 
the  fact  that  the  wife  no  longer  uses  her  own  name,  but  that 
of  her  husband  [!]." 

The  latest  (and  it  is  to  be  hoped  the  last)  of  the  German  meta- 
physicians, the  pessimist  Hartmann,  goes  even  a  step  beyond 
Fichte  in  arrogating  for  man  special  privileges  in  Love.  If  Fichte 
makes  Love  synonymous  with  Self-Sacrifice — feminine,  mind  you, 
not  masculine — Hartmann  tries  to  prove  that  man  may  love  as 
often  as  he  pleases,  but  woman  only  once.  And  what  aggravates 
the  offence,  he  does  it  in  such  a  poetic  manner.  "  Though  it  may 
be  doubtful,"  he  says,  "whether  a  man  can  truly  love  two  women 
at  the  same  time,  it  is  beyond  all  doubt  that  he  can  love  several  in 
succession  with  all  the  depth  of  his  heart ;  and  the  assertion  that 
there  is  only  one  true  love  is  an  unwarranted  generalisation  to  all 
mankind  of  a  maxim  which  is  true  of  woman  alone.  .  .  .  Woman 
can  learn  but  once  by  experience  what  love  is,  and  it  is  painful  for 
the  lover  not  to  be  the  one  who  teaches  her  first.  True  it  is  that 
a  tree  nipped  by  a  spring  frost  brings  forth  a  second  crown  of 


GERMAN  LOVE  285 

leaves,  but  so  rich  and  luxuriant  as  the  first  it  will  not  be ;  thus 
does  a  maiden-heart  produce  a  second  bloom,  if  the  first  had 
to  wither  before  maturity,  but  its  full  and  complete  floral  glory  is 
unfolded  only  where  love,  aroused  for  the  first  time,  passes  in  full 
vigour  through  all  its  phases." 

Yet  it  is  not  ungallant  selfishness  alone  that  prompts  German 
men  to  bring  up  their  women  so  that  they  shall  be  mere  playthings 
at  first  and  drudges  after  marriage,  never  real  soul-mates.  They 
have  the  same  old  stupid  continental  fear  that  culture  of  the 
intellect  weakens  the  feelings.  This  fear  is  based  on  slovenly 
reasoning — on  the  inference  that  because  a  few  blue-stockings  have 
at  all  ages  made  themselves  ridiculous  by  assuming  masculine 
attributes  and  parading  their  lack  of  tenderness  and  feminine 
delicacy,  therefore  intellectual  training  must  be  fatal  to  feminine 
charms.  As  if  there  were  not  plenty  of  masculine  blue-stockings, 
or  pedants,  without  disproving  the  fact  that  the  men  of  the  greatest 
intellectual  power — men  of  genius — are  also  the  most  emotional 
and  refined  of  all  men ;  or  the  fact  proved  by  this  whole  mono- 
graph, that  Love  and  general  emotional  refinement  grow  with  the 
general  intellectual  culture  of  women. 

A  typical  illustration  of  German  feeling  on  the  subject  of  female 
education  is  to  be  found  in  Sc'nweiger-Lerchenfeld's  Frauenleben 
ckr  Urde,  p.  530.  Eeferring  to  the  attempts  now  being  made  in 
France  to  give  young  girls  a  rational  education,  he  quotes  tfto 
opinion  of  a  French  legislator  that  a  girl  thus  brought  up  would 
not  love  less  deeply  than  heretofore,  while  she  would  love  more 
intelligently;  and  then  comments  as  follows:  "How  far  this 
anticipation  may  be  realised  cannot  be  decided  now  or  in  the  near 
future.  At  any  rate  we  must  leave  to  the  French  themselves  the 
task  of  getting  along  with  this  classical  female  generation  of  the 
future.  Certain  it  is  that  their  experiment  will  hardly  be  imitated, 
and  that  the  old  Eomans  and  Greeks  may  eventually  become  more 
dangerous  to  masculine  supremacy  (Autoritat)  than  the  pilgrimage 
stories  of  Lourdes." 

It  is  time  for  German  woman  to  rise  in  revolt  against  this 
mediaeval  masculine  selfishness.  Not  in  active  revolt,  for  a  warlike 
woman  is  an  abomination.  But  in  passive  revolt.  Let  them 
usase  to  spoil  the  men,  and  these  bears  will  become  more  gallant. 
Germany  is  later  in  almost  every  phase  of  literary  and  social 
culture  than  England.  It  was  not  an  accident  that  Shakspere 
came  before  Heine,  the  English  before  the  German  poet  of  Love ; 
for  Love  is  much  less  advanced  in  Germany  than  in  England.  It 
has  not  even  passed  the  stage  where  a  harsh  sort  of  Coyness  is  still 


286  ROM  ANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

in  place.  German  women  want  to  learn  the  cunning  to  be  strange. 
They  are  too  deferential  to  the  men,  too  easily  won.  They  want 
to  learn  to  indulge  in  harmless  flirtation,  and  they  want  the  educa- 
tion which  will  give  them  wit  enough  to  flirt  cleverly  and  make 
the  men  mollow. 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  notwithstanding  all  these 
strictures,  that  there  is  much  genuine  Romantic  Love  in  Germany, 
often  differing  in  no  wise  from  Anglo-American  Love.  At  first 
sight  it  seems,  indeed,  as  if  chaperonage  were  as  strict  as  in 
France ;  and  no  doubt  many  German  girls  are  brought  up  on  the 
spring-chicken-coyness  system  which  regards  every  man  as  a  hawk, 
and  a  signal  fcr  hiding  away  in  a  corner.  But  in  general  Ger- 
man girls  have  much  more  freedom  than  French  girls.  They 
may  walk  alone  in  the  street  in  the  daytime,  go  alone  to 
the  conservatory  to  attend  a  music-lesson.  They  meet  the  young 
men  freely  at  evening  parties,  dances,  musical  entertainments, 
etc. ;  and  the  chaperons  are  not  nearly  so  obtrusive  and  offen- 
sive as  in  France.  The  mothers  appear  to  have  taken  to  heart 
Jean  Paul's  saying  that  "in  the  mother's  presence  it  is  impos- 
sible to  carry  on  an  edifying  conversation  with  the  daughter." 
So  that  there  is  plenty  of  opportunity  for  falling  in  love ;  and 
were  it  not  for  parental  dictation,  Love-matches  would  perhaps 
be  as  common  as  in  England.  But  the  girls  lack  independence 
of  spirit  to  defy  parental  tyranny,  which  it  is  their  moral  duty 
to  defy  where  money  or  rank  are  pitted  against  Love.  For  the 
health  and  happiness  of  the  next  generation  are  at  stake. 

German  girls  also  enjoy  an  advantage  over  the  French  in 
having  a  literature  which  is  pure  and  wholesome ;  and  by  reading 
about  Romantic  Love  they  train  and  deepen  their  feelings.  It  is 
often  said  that  Heine's  influence  has  been  chiefly  negative.  The 
truth  is,  Heine  is  the  greatest  emotional  educator  Germany  has 
ever  liad.  More  young  men  and  girls  have  wept  over  his  pathetic 
lyrics  than  over  any  other  poetry.  His  Buck  der  Lieder  has  done 
more  to  foster  the  growth  of  Romantic  Love  in  Germany  than  all 
other  collections  of  verse  combined;  not  only  by  their  own 
unadorned  beauty,  but  through  the  soulful  music  wedded  to  these 
poems  by  Schubert,  Schumann,  and  other  magicians  of  the  heart. 
The  fact  that  the  copyright  on  Heine's  works  was  soon  to  expire, 
and  the  country  to  be  flooded  with  cheap  editions,  has  long  csjbed 
Master  Cupid  to  rub  his  hands  in  gleeful  anticipation  of  brisk  busi- 
ness; and  he  has  just  given  orders  in  his  arsenal  for  one 
hundred  thousand  new  golden  arrows. 

Heine  indeed  fathomed  the  secrets  of  Love  much  more  deeply 


GERMAN  LOVE  287 

than  Goethe.  Whereas  Heine  sang  of  Love  in  every  major  and 
minor  key,  Goethe  appears  to  have  emphasised  chiefly  its  transi- 
toriness.  "  Love,  as  Goethe  knows  it,"  says  Professor  Seeley,  "  is 
very  tender,  and  has  a  lyric  note  as  fresh  as  that  of  a  song-bird. 
In  his  Autobiography  one  love-passage  succeeds  another,  but  each 
comes  speedily  to  an  end.  How  far  in  each  case  he  was  to  blame 
is  a  matter  of  controversy.  But  he  seems  to  betray  a  way  of 
thinking  about  women  such  as  might  be  natural  to  an  Oriental 
sultan.  '  I  was  iu  that  agreeable  phase,'  he  writes,  *  when  a  new 
passion  had  begun  to  spring  up  in  me  before  the  old  one  had  quite 
disappeared.'  About  Frederika  he  blames  himself  without  reserve, 
and  uses  strong  expressions  of  contrition ;  but  he  forgets  the 
matter  strangely  soon.  In  his  distress  of  mind  he  says  he  found 
riding,  and  especially  skating,  bring  much  relief.  This  reminds  us 
of  the  famous  letter  to  the  Frau  von  Stein  about  coffee.  He  is 
always  ready  in  a  moment  to  shake  off  the  deepest  impressions  and 
receive  new  ones ;  and  he  never  looks  back.  .  .  .  Goethe  was  a 
man  of  the  old  regime.  .  .  .  Had  he  entered  into  the  reforming 
movement  of  his  age,  he  might  have  striven  to  elevate  women.  .  .  . 
He  certainly  felt  at  times  that  all  was  not  right  in  the  status  of 
women  ('woman's  fate  is  pitiable'),  and  how  narrowly  confined  was 
their  happiness  (wie  enggebunden  ist  des  Weibes  Gluck)  .  .  .  but 
he  was  not  a  reformer  of  institutions." 

A  reformer  of  institutions,  however,  has  apparently  just  arisen 
in  Berlin.  For  we  read  that  at  a  private  female  seminary  the  girls 
received  the  following  subject  for  an  essay :  "  There  is  from  the 
Ideas  of  Plato,  the  atoms  of  Democritus,  the  Substance  of  Spinoza, 
the  monads  of  Leibnitz,  and  from  the  subjective  mental  forms  of 
Kant,  the  proof  to  bring,  that  the  philosophy  it  never  neglected 
has  the  to-be-calculated  results  of  their  hypotheses  with  their  into- 
perception-falling  effects  to  compare." 

Such  subjects,  so  elegantly  expressed,  are  no  doubt  eminently 
calculated  to  bring  out  the  latent  possibilities  of  feminine  feeling 
and  culture. 

To  close  this  chapter  with  a  sweet,  soothing  concord — major 
triad,  horns  and  'cellos,  smorzando — it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
Germans  have  one  ingredient  of  Romantic  Love  which  all  other 
nations  must  envy  them.  They  have  one  more  thrill  in  the  drama 
of  Love,  in  the  ascending  scale  of  familiarities,  than  we  have,  namely, 
the  word  Du,  which  is  something  very  different  from  the  stilted 
Thou,  because  still  a  part  of  everyday  language.  The  second 
person  singular  is  used  in  Germany  towards  pet  animals  and 
children,  between  students,  intimate  friends,  relatives,  and  lovers, 


288  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

French  "  lovers  "  do  not  say  tu  to  each  other  till  after  marriage,  and 
even  then  they  do  not  use  it  in  public.  But  the  German  lover  has 
the  privilege,  as  soon  as  he  is  engaged,  of  exchanging  the  formal  Sie 
for  the  affectionate  Du  ;  and  the  first  Du  that  comes  from  her  lips 
can  hardly  be  less  sweet  than  the  first  kiss. 

There  is  a  game  of  cards,  popular  among  young  folks  in  Germany, 
during  which  you  have  to  address  every  one  with  Du  whom  you 
otherwise  would  have  to  call  Sie,  and  vice  versd  ;  cards  have  to  be 
called  spoons,  white  black,  etc.  If  there  is  a  young  man  in  the 
company  secretly  in  love  with  a  young  lady,  you  can  always 
"  spot "  him  by  the  eagerness  he  shows  to  speak  to  her,  and  the 
fact  that  he  always  gets  the  Du  right  and  everything  else  wrong ; 
while  she,  strange  to  say,  appears  to  have  never  heard  of  such  a 
thing  at  all  as  a  personal  pronoun. 

ENGLISH   LOVE 

Concerning  Eomantic  Love  in  England  and  America,  there  is 
less  to  be  said  under  the  head  of  National  Peculiarities  than  in 
case  of  the  continental  nations  of  Europe,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  almost  everything  said  in  the  pages  on  Modern  Love  refers 
especially  to  these  two  countries.  Anglo-American  Love  is 
Romantic  Love,  pure  and  simple,  as  first  depicted  by  Shakspere, 
and  after  him,  with  more  or  less  accuracy,  by  a  hundred  other 
poets  and  novelists.  There  is  no  lack  of  colour  in  this  Love — 
colour  warm  and  glowing — but  it  is  no  longer  a  mere  local  colour,  a 
national  or  provincial  peculiarity,  but  Love  in  its  essence,  its 
cosmopolitan  aspect ;  Love  such  as  will  in  course  of  time  prevail 
throughout  the  world,  when  the  Anglisation  of  this  planet — which 
is  only  a  question  of  time — shall  have  been  completed. 

England  has  many  a  bright  jewel  in  the  crown  of  her  achieve- 
ments in  behalf  of  civilisation,  but  the  brighest  of  all  is  this,  that 
she  was  the  first  country  in  the  world — ancient,  mediaeval,  or 
modern — that  removed  the  bars  from  woman's  prison-windows, 
opened  every  door  to  Cupid,  and  made  him  thoroughly  welcome 
and  comfortable.  And  grateful  Cupid  has  retaliated  by  setting  ap 
English  manners  and  customs  as  a  model  which  all  other  nations 
are  slowly  but  surely  copying.  Eighteen  million  souls  in  the 
United  States,  or  almost  two  persons  in  every  five,  are  not  of 
English  origin ;  yet  of  these  there  are  not  one  million  who  have 
not  given  up  their  old  country  methods  of  courtship  as  antiquated, 
and  adopted  the  Anglo-American  style.  The  Germans  in  America 
make  love  not  after  the  German  but  after  the  English  fashion.  So 


ENGLISH  LOVE  289 

ilo  the  French,  though  somewhat  more  reluctantly  and  tardily.  In 
San  Francisco  and  Chicago  it  is  said  that  but  one  name  in  ten 
is  of  English  origin ;  yet  who  ever  heard  of  a  San  Franciscan 
or  Chicagoan  making  love  in  foreign  style?  During  the 
last  hundred  years  the  majority  of  the  immigrants  to  America 
have  come  from  non-English  countries;  yet,  though  the  parents 
enter  the  country  as  adults  with  all  their  national  traditions 
stamped  on  their  memories,  they  invariably  allow  their  sous  and 
daughters  to  court  and  be  courted  in  American  style.  And  now 
that  England  is  gradually  extending  her  influence  to  every  one  of 
the  five  continents,  Romantic  Love — to  whose  sway,  quite  as  much 
as  to  their  outdoor  active  life,  the  English  owe  the  fact  that  they  are 
to-day  the  handsomest  and  most  energetic  race  in  the  world — is 
also  rapidly  extending  its  sphere,  and  will  finally  oust  the  last 
vestiges  of  Oriental  despotism,  feminine  suppression,  and  mediaeval 
masculine  barbarism. 

For  some  centuries  woman  has  been  more  favoured  by  law,  an<* 
especially  by  national  custom,  in  England  than  in  any  other 
European  state.  It  is  true  that  the  Englishman  who  beats  his 
wife  is  the  most  brutal  savage  on  the  face  of  the  globe,  but  he  is 
to  be  found  only  among  the  lowest  classes.  Nor  has  wife-selling 
ever  been  quite  such  a  universal  custom  in  England  as  foreigners 
imagine ;  although  cases  are  on  record  as  far  back  as  1302  and  as 
late  as  1884.  In  an  article  in  All  the  Year  Round  (Dec.  20, 1884) 
more  than  twenty  cases  are  enumerated  with  full  details,  the  price 
of  a  wife  varying  from  twenty-five  guineas  to  a  pint  or  half  a  pint 
of  beer,  or  a  penny  and  a  dinner ;  and  the  Times  of  July  22, 1797, 
remarks  sarcastically :  "  By  some  mistake  or  omission,  in  the  report 
of  the  Smithiield  market,  we  have  not  learned  the  average  price  of 
wives  for  the  week.  The  increasing  value  of  the  fair  sex  is  es- 
teemed by  several  eminent  writers  the  certain  criterion  of  increasing 
civilisation.  Smithfield  has,  on  this  ground,  strong  pretensions  to 
refined  improvement,  as  the  price  of  wives  has  risen  in  that  market 
from  half  a  guinea  to  three  guinea,?  and  a  half." 

That  these  cases  occurred  only  among  the  lowest  classes  is  self- 
evident;  yet  even  the  lowest  classes  often  resented  the  brutal 
transaction  by  pelting  the  offenders  with  stones  and  mud ;  whereas, 
as  far  as  the  women  were  concerned,  the  offence  was  mitigated  by 
the  fact  that  in  all  cases  on  record  they  appear  to  have  been  only 
too  glad  to  be  sold,  so  as  to  get  rid  of  their  tyrants. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  English  women  are  all  exempt  from  the 
hardest  manual  labour  even  to-day ;  but  the  tendency  to  relieve 
them  of  tasks  unsuited  to  feminine  muscular  development  has 

u 


290  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

existed  longer  in  England  than  elsewhere.  The  difference  can  be 
best  observed  with  regard  to  agricultural  labour.  Any  one  who 
travels  through  Italy,  Switzerland,  France,  or  Germany  in  the 
autumn,  gets  the  impression  that  most  of  the  harvesting  is  done  by 
the  women  ;  whereas  in  England,  as  shown  by  statistics,  there  are 
twenty-two  men  to  every  woman  engaged  as  field-labourers.  Yet 
even  at  that  rate  there  are  still  64,840  women  in  England  engaged 
in  agricultural  labour  un  suited  to  their  sex. 

On  the  other  hand,  English  women,  like  American  women,  ?.re 
manifesting  a  great  disposition  at  present  to  try  their  hand  or 
brain  at  almost  every  employment  heretofore  considered  exclusively 
masculine.  The  census  enumerates  349  different  classes  of  work, 
and  of  these  all  but  about  70  have  been  invaded  by  women ;  in- 
cluding 5  horse-dealers,  14  bicycle  makers  and  dealers,  16  sculptors, 
18  fence  makers,  1 9  fossil  diggers,  etc. ;  whereas  there  are  as  yet  no 
female  pilots,  dentists,  police  officers,  shepherds,  law  students, 
architects,  cab-drivers,  commercial  travellers,  barristers,  etc.  [Full 
list  in  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  Oct.  3,  1884.] 

Inasmuch  as  there  are  almost  a  million  more  women  than  men 
in  England,  it  is  not  surprising  that  women  should  thus  seek  to 
extend  their  sphere  of  usefulness.  We  live  in  an  experimental 
epoch,  when  it  is  to  be  ascertained  what  is  and  what  is  not  becom- 
ing to  woman  regarded  as  a  labourer.  It  is  therefore  of  the  utmost 
importance  that  there  should  be  some  standard  by  which  each  em- 
ployment is  to  be  judged.  And  this  standard,  fortunately,  is 
supplied  by  Romantic  Love. 

We  have  seen  that  the  tendency  of  civilisation  has  been  to 
differentiate  the  sexes  more  and  more  in  appearance,  character,  and 
emotional  susceptibilities,  and  that  on  this  differentiation  depends 
the  existence  and  power  of  Love,  because  it  individualises  mau  and 
woman,  and  Love  is  the  more  intense  the  more  it  is  individualised. 

Hence  every  employment  which  tends  to  make  woman  masculine 
in  appearance  or  habits  is  to  be  tabooed  by  her  because  antagonistic 
to  Love.  If  she,  nevertheless,  persists  in  it,  Love  will  have  its 
revenge  by  eliminating  her  through  Sexual  Selection.  No  man 
will  marry  a  masculine  woman,  or  fall  in  love  with  her,  so  that 
her  unnatural  temperament  will  not  be  transmitted  to  the  next 
generation  and  multiplied. 

But  what  is  to  be  accepted  as  the  standard  of  femininity  1  The 
answer  is  given  us  by  Nature.  Throughout  the  animal  world,  with 
a  few  insignificant  exceptions,  the  sexes  are  differentiated  dis- 
tinctly ;  and  the  female  is  the  more  tender  and  gentle  of  the  two, 
the  more  devoted  to  domestic  affection  and  the  care  and  education 


ENGLISH  LOVE  231 

of  the  young,  the  more  amiable,  and,  above  all,  less  aggressive,  bold, 
and  pugnacious  than  the  male.  "Any  education  which  women 
undergo,"  says  the  Spectator,  "should  be  an  education  not  for  the 
militant  life  of  war  against  evil  but  for  the  spiritual  life  inspiring 
a  persuasive  or  patient  charity.  .  .  .  Even  in  a  field  properly 
suited  to  them — the  field  of  charitable  institutions,  of  poor-law 
work,  of  educational  representation — women  no  sooner  take  up  the 
cudgels  than  they  lose  their  appropriate  influence,  and  are  either 
unsexed  or  paralysed." 

According  to  Mr.  Ruskin,  "woman's  work  is — (1)  To  please 
people.  (2)  To  feed  them  in  dainty  ways.  (3)  To  clothe  them. 
(4)  To  keep  them  orderly.  (5)  To  teach  them." 

Statistics  concerning  the  employments  instinctively  sought  by 
the  majority  of  women  bear  out  Mr.  Ruskin's  table  quite  well. 
Woman's  first  duty  is  to  please  people  by  being  beautiful,  amiable, 
and  fascinating  in  conversation  and  manners.  No  man  would 
marry  a  woman  unless  she  pleased  him  in  one  way  or  another ; 
hence  matrimony  is  the  most  successful  female  profession,  which 
in  England  includes  4,437,962  women.  But  there  are  other  ways 
in  which  women  seek  to  please  and  prosper ;  hence  there  are  in 
England  2368  actresses  as  against  2197  actors,  and  11,376  women 
whose  profession  is  music,  as  against  14,170  men. 

Domestic  service,  which  includes  the  "  feeding  in  dainty  ways  " 
(though  too  often  the  "  dainty "  must  be  omitted),  employs 
1,230,406  women  in  England— about  30,000  fewer  than  industrial 
employments,  which  are  somewhat  more  popular  owing  to  the 
greater  individual  liberty  they  allow  the  employed.  Yet  domestic 
service  is  a  much  better  preparation  for  married  life  than  labour  in 
a  manufactory  \  so  that,  other  things  being  equal,  a  labouring  man 
looking  for  a  wife  would  be  apt  to  select  one  who  has  learned  how 
to  take  care  of  his  home.  This  thought  ought  to  help  to  render 
domestic  service  more  popular. 

"To  clothe  them."  Dressmaking,  staymaking  (alas!),  and 
millinery,  employ  357,995  women  in  England. 

"  To  keep  them  orderly."  Bathing  and  washing  service  employ 
176,670  women ;  medicine  and  nursing,  almost  50,000;  missions, 
1660. 

"To  teach  them."  This,  one  of  woman's  special  vocations, 
eminently  suited  to  her  capacity,  employs  123,995  females. 

If  I  have  failed  in  correctly  interpreting  Mr.  Ruskin's  oracle,  I 
stand  subject  to  correction  from  that  earnest  labourer  in  the  task 
of  finding  for  woman  her  proper  sphere — a  work  for  which  he  has 
not  yet  received  the  recognition  and  thanks  he  deserves. 


292  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

That  marriage,  and  not  miscellaneous  employment,  is  woman's 
true  destiny,  is  shown  by  the  way  in  which  Cupid  influences  sta- 
tistics. Thus  there  are  in  England  about  29;000  school-mistresses 
aged  15-20,  and  28,500  aged  25-45 ;  but  the  time  from  20-25, 
the  period  of  courtship  and  marriage,  has  only  21,000.  In  the 
case  of  dressmakers  this  fact  is  brought  out  still  more  strikingly  : 
15.20  —  84,000;  20-25—76,000;  25-45  —  129,000,  in  round 
numbers. 

Although,  therefore,  as  Emerson  remarks,  "the  circumstances 
may  be  easily  imagined  in  which  woman  may  speak,  vote,  argue 
cases,  legislate,  and  drive  coaches,  if  only  it  comes  by  degrees," 
facts  show  that  there  is  more  philosophy  of  the  future  in  Mrs. 
Hawthorne's  remark  that  "  Home,  I  think,  is  the  great  arena  for 
women,  and  there,  I  am  sure,  she  can  wield  a  power  which  no  king 
or  emperor  can  cope  with." 

A  consideration  of  all  the  foregoing  facts  shows  that  Love  may 
be  safely  accepted  as  a  guiding-star  in  making  a  proper  division  of 
the  world's  labour  between  men  and  women.  And  the  reason  why 
England  and  America  have  made  so  much  more  progress  than 
other  nations  in  ascertaining  woman's  true  capacity  and  sphere, 
is  because  she  has  been  educated  to  a  point  where  she  can  assert 
her  independence,  and  where  she  can  inspire  as  well  as  feel  Love 
— thus  making  man  humble,  gallant,  gentle,  ready  to  make  con- 
cessions and  remove  restrictions.  It  is  in  England  and  America 
alone  that  Love  plays  a  more  important  role  in  marriage  than 
money  and  social  position ;  that  the  young  are  generally  permitted 
to  consult  their  own  heart  instead  of  parental  command ;  and  that 
the  opportunities  for  courtship  are  so  liberal  and  numerous  that 
the  young  are  enabled  to  fall  in  love  with  one  another  not  only  for 
dazzling  qualities  of  Personal  Beauty,  viewed  for  a  moment,  but  for 
traits  of  character,  emotional  refinement,  and  a  cultured  intellect. 

These  two  nations  alone  have  fully  taken  to  heart  and  heeded 
Addison's  maxim  that  "  Those  marriages  generally  abound  most 
with  love  and  constancy  that  are  preceded  by  a  long  courtship. 
The  passion  should  strike  root  and  gather  strength  before  marriage 
be  grafted  on  it.  A  long  course  of  hopes  and  expectations  fixes 
the  idea  in  our  minds,  and  habituates  us  to  a  fondness  of  the  per- 
son beloved." 

There  is,  however,  a  difference  between  English  and  American 
Love  which  shows  that  we  have  learned  Addison's  lesson  even 
better  than  his  own  countrymen.  As  Mr.  Robert  Laird  Collier 
remarks  in  English  Home  Life :  "  The  American  custom,  among 
the  mass  of  the  people,  of  leaving  young  men  and  young  women 


ENGLISH  LOVE  298 

free  to  associate  together  and  to  keep  company  with  each  other 
for  an  indefinite  length  of  time,  without  declaring  their  intentions, 
is  almost  unknown  in  any  country  of  Europe.  It  is  not  long 
after  a  young  man  begins  to  show  the  daughter  attentions  before 
the  father  gives  intimation  that  he  wishes  to  know  what  it  means, 
and  either  the  youth  declares  his  intentions  or  is  notified  to  *  cut 
sticks.' "  "  Courtships  in  England  are  short,  and  engagements  are 
long." 

The  London  Standard  doubtless  exaggerates  the  difference 
between  English  and  American  girls  and  their  attitude  toward 
men  in  the  course  of  an  article,  part  of  which  may,  nevertheless, 
be  cited  :  "  American  girls  offer  a  bright  example  to  their  English 
eisters  of  a  happy,  unclouded  youth,  and  instances  seem  to  be  few 
of  their  abusing  the  liberty  which  is  accorded  to  them.  Perhaps 
their  immunity  from  sentimental  troubles  arises  from  the  fact  that 
from  earliest  childhood  they  have  been  comrades  of  the  other  sex, 
and  are  therefore  not  disposed  to  turn  a  man  into  a  derni-god  be- 
cause they  only  see  one  at  rare  intervals  under  the  eagle  eye  of  a 
mother  or  aunt.  A  great  revolution  in  public  opinion  would  be 
required  ere  English  girls  could  be  emancipated  to  the  extent 
which  prevails  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  even  then 
it  is  doubtful  whether  the  system  would  work  well.  The 
daughters  of  Albion,  with  but  few  exceptions,  are  single-hearted, 
earnest,  and  prone  to  look  upon  everything  seriously.  They  often 
make  the  mistake  of  imagining  that  a  man  is  in  love  because  he 
is  decently  civil." 

Yet  in  German  Home  Life,  written  from  an  English  point 
of  view,  we  read  that  "  There  is  no  such  thing  as  country  life,  as 
we  understand  it,  in  Germany ;  no  cosy  sociability,  smiling  snug- 
ness,  pleasant  bounties  and  hospitalities ;  and,  above  all,  for  the 
young  folk,  no  freedom,  flirtation,  boatings,  sketchings,  high  teas, 
ecamperings,  and  merriments  generally."  And  again  :  "  The  sort 
of  frank  '  flirtation,'  beginning  openly  in  fun  and  ending  in  amuse- 
ment, which  is  common  amongst  healthy,  high-spirited  boys  and 
girls  in  England,  and  has  no  latent  elemeat  of  intrigue  or  vanity 
in  it,  but  is  born  of  exuberant  animal  spirits,  youthful  frolics,  and 
healthy  pastimes  shared  together,  is  forbidden  to  her  "  (the  Ger- 
man girl). 

The  Standard  itself  apparently  contradicts  itself  in  another 
article  on  "  Flirtation,"  concerning  which  it  says  :  "  It  is  usually 
so  innocent  that  it  has  become  part  of  the  education  most  of  our 
young  women  pass  through  in  their  training  for  society!.  The 
British  matron  smiles  contentedly  when  she  sees  that  her  daughter, 


294  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

just  entered  on  her  teens,  exhibits  a  partiality  for  long  walks  and 
soft-toned  confabulations  with  her  cousin  Fred  or  'her  brother's 
favourite  schoolmate.  Three  or  four  such  juvenile  attachments 
will  do  the  girl  no  harm,  if  they  are  gently  watched  over  by  the 
parental  eye.  They  serve  to  evolve  the  sexually  social  instincts  in 
a  gradual  way.  Through  them  the  bashful  maiden  learns  the 
nature  of  man  in  the  same  fashion  as  she  takes  lessons  on  the 
piano.  In  a  word,  she  is  '  getting  her  hand  in '  for  the  real  game 
cf  matrimony  that  is  to  be  played  in  a  few  years.  Her  youthful 
swains,  of  course,  derive  their  own  instructions  from  these  inno- 
cent amours.  .  .  .  Chivalrous  feeling  is  developed  which  it  takes 
a  deal  of  worldly  wisdom  to  smother  in  after  years.  .  .  .  When 
we  observe  this  sentimentality  in  a  boy,  we  derive  great  amuse- 
ment from  it,  but  it  should  raise  the  lad  in  our  estimation.  He 
has  something  in  him  to  which  ideals  appeal,  and  his  early- 
developed  susceptibility  will — to  use  a  beautiful  but  forgotten 
word — engentle  his  nature." 

Perhaps  the  difference  between  English  and  American  court- 
ship and  flirtation  is  not  so  great  as  often  painted,  and  is  becoming 
less  every  year,  owing  to  the  Americanisation  of  Europe. 

AMERICAN  LOVE 

It  is  in  the  United  States  of  America  that  Plato's  ideal — so 
completely  ignored  by  his  countrymen — that  young  men  and 
women  should  have  ample  opportunity  to  meet  and  get  acquainted 
with  one  another  before  marriage,  is  most  perfectly  realised ;  as 
well  as  Addison's  supplementary  advice  that  marriage  should  be 
preceded  by  a  long  courtship. 

As  boys  and  girls  in  America  are  commonly  educated  in  the 
same  schools,  they  are  initiated  at  an  early  age  into  the  sweets 
and  sorrows  of  Calf-love  Courtship,  which  has  such  a  refining 
influence  on  the  boys,  and  renders  the  girls  more  easy  and  natural 
in  society  when  they  get  older ;  destroying  among  other  puerili- 
ties that  spring-chicken  Coyness  which  makes  many  of  their 
European  sisters  appear  so  silly.  In  the  Western  country-schools 
each  girl  has  her  "beau" — a  boy  of  fourteen  to  seventeen — who 
brings  her  flowers,  apples,  or  other  presents,  accompanies  her 
home,  and  performs  various  other  gallant  services ;  nor  has  any 
harm  ever  been  known  to  result  from  this  juvenile  Courtship — 
except  an  occasional  elopement,  in  case  of  a  prematurely  frivolous 
couple,  whom  it  was  just  as  well  to  get  rid  of  in  that  way  as  any 
other. 


AMERICAN  LOVE  295 

When  they  get  a  little  older,  the  young  folks  go  to  picnics 
•without  a  chaperon,  or  they  enjoy  a  drive  or  sleigh-ride,  or  go  a- 
skating  together ;  and  after  a  party,  dance,  church  fair,  or  other 
social  gathering,  where  the  elders  commonly  keep  out  of  the  way 
considerately,  each  young  man  accompanies  a  young  lady  home. 
Were  you  to  insinuate  to  him  the  advisability  of  having  a  chaperon 
for  the  young  lady,  he  would  inform  you  pointedly  that  the  young 
lady  needed  no  protection  inasmuch  as  he  was  a  gentleman  and  not 
a  tramp.     It  is  this  high  sense  of  gentlemanly  honour  that  pro- 
tects women  in  America — a  hundred  times  better  than  all  the 
barred  windows  of  the  Orient  and  the  dragons  of  Europe.    Thanks 
to  this  feeling  of  modern  chivalry,  a  young  lady  may  travel  all^i^-u 
alone  from  New  York  to  Chicago,  or  even  to  San  Francisco,  and,    ^  * 
if  her  manners  are  modest  and  refined,  she  will  not  once  be  in-  'V 
suited  by  word  or  look,  not  even  in  passing  through  the  roughest  -Vfftii  ^Vyv 
mining  regions.. 

'  "I1* is  the  consciousness  of  this  chivalrous  code  of  honour  among 
the  men  that  gives  an  American  girl  the  frank  and  natural  gaze 
which  is  one  of  her  greatest  charms,  and  that  allows  her  to  talk 
to  a  man  just  introduced  as  if  they  were  old  acquaintances.  It  is 
a  knowledge  of  this  gentlemanly  code  that  makes  parents  feel- 
perfectly  at  ease  in  leaving  their  daughter  alone  in  the  parlour  all 
the  evening  with  a  visitor.  In  a  word,  American  customs  prove 
that  if  you  treat  a  man  as  a  gentleman  he  will  behave  like  a 
gentleman. 

Unquestionably  there  are  girls  who  abuse  the  liberty  allowed 
them,  and  encourage  the  men  to  encourage  them  in  their  freedom. 
Mr.  Henry  James  has  done  a  most  valuable  service  in  holding  up 
the  mirror  to  one  of  these  girls,  to  serve  as  a  warning  to  all  Daisy 
Millers  and  semi-Daisy  Millers.  There  are  not  a  few  of  the  latter 
kind,  and  I  have  myself  met  three  full-fledged  specimens  of  the 
real  "  Daisy  "  in  Europe — girls  who  would  not  have  hesitated  to 
go  out  rowing  on  a  lake  at  eleven  o'clock  in  the  evening  with  a 
man  known  to  them  only  a  few  hours,  or  to  go  next  day  with  him 
to  visit  an  old  tower,  or  to  say  that  mamma  "  always  makes  a  fuss 
if  I  introduce  a  gentleman.  But  I  do  introduce  them— almost 
always.  If  I  didn't  introduce  my  gentlemen  friends  to  mother,  I 
shouldn't  think  I  was  natural."  ..,  It  is  this  class  of  American 
tourists  that  have,  unfortunately, -given  foreigners  a  caricatured 
notion  of  the  American  girl's  deportment 

Etiquette  differs  somewhat*  in  /various  American  cities  and 
among  the  different  classes.  For  instance,  a  young  lady  of  the 
"  upper  circle?, "  who  in  Chicago  is  permitted  to  drive  to  the 


296  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

theatre  in  a  carriage  with  a  young  man,  is  not  allowed  the  same 
privilege  in  New  York. 

The  New  York  Sun,  an  excellent  authority  in  social  matters, 
gives  the  whole  philosophy  of  American  Courtship  and  Love  iu 
answering  a  young  man's  question  as  to  whether,  in  asking  a  young 
lady  of  the  highest  circles  to  accompany  him  to  a  place  of  amuse- 
ment, it  is  necessary  to  invite  a  chaperon  at  the  same  time.  He 
is  told  that  he  must, — in  those  circles  : — 

"  But  these  people  are  only  a  few  among  the  many.  What  is 
called  society  more  exclusively  in  New  York  comprises,  all  told,  no 
more  than  a  hundred  or  two  hundred  families.  Outside  of  them, 
of  course,  there  are  larger  circles,  to  which  they  give  the  law  to  a 
greater  or  less  extent,  but  the  whole  number  of  men  and  women 
in  this  great  town  of  a  million  and  a  half  of  inhabitants  who  pay 
obedience  to  that  law  is  not  over  a  few  thousand. 

"  Nine  girls  out  of  ten  in  New  York,  with  the  full  consent  of 
their  parents  and  as  a  matter  of  course,  accompany  young  men  to 
amusements  without  taking  a  chaperon  along.  They  feel,  and 
they  are,  entirely  able  to  look  out  for  themselves,  and  they  would 
regard  the  whole  fun  as  spoiled  if  a  third  person  was  on  hand  to 
watch  over  them.  A  large  part  of  the  audience  at  every  theatre  is 
always  made  up  of  young  men  and  young  women  who  have  come 
out  in  pairs,  and  who  have  no  thought  of  violating  any  rule  of 
propriety.  Very  many  of  these  girls  would  never  be  invited  to  the 
theatre  by  their  male  acquaintances  if  they  were  under  the  dominion 
of  such  a  usage,  for  the  men  want  them  to  themselves,  else  they 
would  not  ask  their  company,  and  besides  do  not  feel  able  to  pay 
for  an  extra  ticket  for  an  obnoxious  third  person ;  or,  if  they  have 
a  little  more  money  to  spare,  they  prefer  to  expend  it  at  an  ice- 
cream saloon  after  the  play. 

"  Nor  can  it  be  said  that  the  morals  of  these  less  formal  young 
people  are  any  worse  than  those  of  the  more  exacting  society. 
Probably  they  are  better  on  the  average,  and  if  the  laws  of  Murray 
Hill  prevailed  throughout  this  city,  the  marriage-rate  of  New  York 
would  be  likely  to  decline,  for  nothing  discourages  the  passion  of 
the  average  young  man  so  much  as  his  inability  to  meet  the 
charmer  except  in  the  presence  of  a  third  person,  who  acts  as  a 
buffer  between  him  and  her.  He  feels  that  he  has  no  show,  and 
cannot  appear  to  good  advantage  under  the  eyes  of  a  cool  critic, 
whereas  if  he  could  walk  with  the  girl  alone  in  the  shades  of  the 
balmy  evening,  the  courage  to  declare  his  affection  would  come 
to  him. 

"  Therefore  it  is  that  engagements,  even  in  the  most  fashionable 


AMERICAN  LOVE  297 

society,  are  commonly  made  in  the  country  during  the  summer, 
where  the  young  people  come  together  more  freely  and  more 
constantly  than  in  the  town." 

The  attempt  made  in  certain  comers  of  New  York  "  Society  " 
to  introduce  the  foreign  system  of  chaperonage  is  one  of  the  most 
absurd  and  incongruous  efforts  at  aping  foreign  fashions  (which  are 
on  the  decline  even  in  Europe)  ever  witnessed  in  our  midst  In 
Europe  Chaperonage  is  in  so  far  excusable,  as  it  is  a  modified 
survival  from  barbarous  times  when  men  were  mostly  brutes,  being 
drunk  half  the  time  and  on  military  expeditions  the  other  half. 
To  treat  American  men,  who  are  brought  up  as  gentlemen,  and 
commonly  behave  as  such,  as  mediseval  ruffians,  is  a  gratuitous 
insult,  which  they  ought  to  resent  by  avoiding  those  houses  where 
Oriental  experiments  are  being  tried  with  the  daughters.  That 
would  bring  the  "  mammas  "  to  reason  very  soon. 

Yet  it  would  seem  as  if  New  York  "  Society  "  had  already  had 
enough  of  the  Oriental  experiment ;  for  the  same  high  authority 
just  quoted  asserted  last  autumn  that  "A  regular  stampede  in 
favour  of  the  liberty  of  the  young  unmarried  female  is  to  be  under- 
taken this  winter  by  a  number  of  '  three-years-in-society '  veterans, 
supported  and  encouraged  by  nearly  all  this  season's  debutantes. 
The  first  step  is  to  be  the  establishment  of  a  right  on  the  part  of 
young  girls  to  form  parties  for  theatre  matinees  and  afternoon 
concerts,  untrammelled  by  the  presence  of  even  a  matron  of  their 
own  age,  and  to  which  all  *  reliable  and  well-behaved  young  men 
are  to  be  eligible.'  .  .  .  Rule  No.  2  establishes  beyond  all  dispute 
the  often-mooted  question  whether  the  presence  of  a  brother  and 
sister  in  a  party  of  young  people  going  to  any  place  of  evening 
amusement  throws  a  shield  of  respectability  over  the  others  of  the 
party.  Society  long  ago  frowned  upon  this  moijgrel  kind  of 
chaperonage;  but  upon  the  principle  that  no  young  man  would 
permit  indiscretions  or  improprieties  in  a  party  of  which  his  sister 
made  one,  the  '  veterans '  have  voted  in  favour  of  it.  The  young 
man  with  a  sister  is  therefore  to  enact  the  part  of  dragon  on  these 
occasions,  and  will  be  largely  in  demand.  Failing  a  convenient 
sister,  he  may  get  a  cousin,  perhaps,  to 'take  her  place." 

When  it  comes  to  the  cousin,  the  reversion  to  Americanism, 
pure  and  simple,  will  be  complete. 

The  gentlemanliness  and  Gallantry  of  Americans  have  at  all 
times  been  acknowledged  by  observers  of  all  nationalities ;  and  it 
is  indeed  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the  average  American  is 
disposed  to  treat  the  whole  female  sex  with  a  studied  Gallantry, 
which  in  most  European  countries  is  reserved  by  men  for  the 


298  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

one  girl  with  whom  they  happen  to  be  in  love.  Even  the  irate 
aad  vituperative  Anthony  Trollope  in  his  book  on  North  America 
was  obliged  to  admit  that  "  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  in  that 
country  material  wellbeing  and  education  are  more  extended  than 
with  us,  and  that  therefore  men  there  have  learned  to  be  chivalrous 
who  with  us  have  hardly  progressed  so  far.  The  conduct  of  the 
men  to  the  women  throughout  the  states  is  always  gracious.  .  .  . 
But  it  seems  to  me  that  the  women  have  not  advanced  as  far  as 
the  men  have  done.  ...  In  America  the  spirit  of  chivalry  has 
sunk  deeper  among  men  than  it  has  among  women." 

Anthony  Trollope  is  by  no  means  the  only  writer  who  has  put 
his  finger  on  the  greatest  foible  of  American  women.  No  doubt 
they  have,  as  a  class,  been  spoiled  by  excessive  masculine  Gallantry. 
They  do  not,  like  the  women  of  the  Troubadour  period,  who  were 
similarly  spoilt,  go  quite  so  far  as  to  send  their  knights  on  crusades 
and  among  lepers,  but  they  often  shroud  themselves  in  an  atmo- 
sphere of  selfishness  which  is  very  unfeminine — to  choose  a  compli- 
mentary adjective. 

In  the  East,  where  there  is  already  a  large  excess  of  women 
over  men,  this  evil  is  less  marked  than  in  the  West,  where  women 
are  still  in  a  minority.  Thus  the  Denver  Tribune,  in  an  article  on 
"  The  Impoliteness  of  Women,"  remarks  :  "  If  there  is  any  charac- 
teristic of  Americans  of  which  they  are  more  proud  than  any  other, 
it  is  the  courtesy  which  the  men  who  are  natives  of  this  country 
exhibit  towards  women,  and  the  respect  which  the  gentler  sex 
receives  in  public.  This  is  a  trait  of  the  American  character  of 
which  Americans  are  justly  proud,  and  in  which  they  doubtless 
excel  the  people  of  any  other  country.  But  while  this  is  true  of 
the  men,  it  is  a  matter  to  be  deeply  regretted  that  as  much  cannot 
be  eaid  of  the  women  of  this  country."  After  praising  American 
women  for  their  beauty,  vivacity,  high  moral  character,  and  other 
charms,  the  Tribune  adds  that  they  "  seem  very  generally  to  be 
prompted  in  their  conduct  in  public  by  a  spirit  of  selfishness  which 
very  often  finds  expression  in  acts  of  positive  rudeness."  They 
are  ungrateful,  it  continues,  to  the  men  who  give  up  their  seats  in 
street-cars ;  they  compel  men  to  step  into  a  muddy  street,  instead 
of  walking  one  behind  the  other  at  a  crossing ;  and  at  such  places 
as  the  stamp-window  of  the  post-office  they  do  not  wait  for  their 
turn,  but  force  the  men  to  stand  aside. 

Another  Western  paper,  the  Chicago  Tribune,  complains  that 
in  that  city  there  are  10,000  homes  in  which  the  daughters  are 
ignorant  of  the  simplest  kind  of  household  duties.  It  adds  "  That 
they  do  not  desire  to  learn ;  that,  having  been  brought  up  to  do 


AMERICAN  LOVE  299 

nothing  except  appear  gracefully  in  society,  their  object  in  life  is 
to  marry  husbands  who  can  support  them  in  idle  luxury  ;  that  this 
state  of  things  has  substituted  for  marriages  founded  on  love  and 
respect  a  market  in  which  the  men  have  quoted  money-values,  and 
where  a  young  man,  however  great  his  talents,  has  no  chance  of 
winning  a  wife  from  the  charmed  circle." 

So  that  the  pendulum  has  apparently  swung  to  the  other 
extreme.  In  mediaeval  times  the  women  were  married  for  their 
money  by  the  lazy,  selfish  men ;  now  the  women  are  lazy  and 
selfish,  while  the  men  toil  and  are  married  for  their  money. 

Yet  there  is  much  exaggeration  in  this  view,  which  applies  to 
only  a  small  portion  of  the  American  people.  We  are  far  from  the 
times  when  Miss  Martineau  complained  of  the  feeble  health  of 
American  women,  and  attributed  it  to  the  vacuity  of  their  minds. 
Their  health  is  still,  on  the  average,  inferior  to  that  of  English  and 
German  damsels,  from  whom  they  could  also  learn  useful  lessons  in 
domestic  matters ;  but  intellectually  the  American  woman  has  no 
equal  in  the  world;  while  her  sweetness,  grace,  and  proverbial 
beauty  combine  into  an  ensemble  which  makes  Cupid  chuckle 
whenever  he  looks  at  a  susceptible  young  man. 

Goldsmith  says  somewhere  that  "  the  English  love  with  vio- 
lence, and  expect  violent  love  in  return."  Certainly  this  holds 
true  no  less  of  the  Americans.  There  are  indeed  several  favour- 
able circumstances  which  combine  to  make  Romantic  Love  more 
ardent  and  more  prevalent  in  the  United  States  than  in  any  other 
part  of  the  world. 

(1)  The  first  is  the  intellectual  culture  of  women  just  referred 
to,  which  they  owe  partly  to  the  leisure  they  enjoy,  partly  to  the 
fact  that  America  has  the  best  elementary  schools  in  the  world,  so 
that  their  minds  are  aroused  early  from  their  dormant  state.  As 
Bishop  Spalding  remarks  :  "  Woman  here  in  the  United  States  is 
more  religious,  more  moral,  and  more  intelligent  than  man ;  more 
intelligent  in  the  sense  of  greater  openness  to  ideas,  greater  flexi- 
bility of  mind,  and  a  wider  acquaintance  with  literature."  Now 
the  whole  argument  of  this  book  tends  to  show  that  the  capacity 
for  feeling  Romantic  Love  is  dependent  on  intellectual  culture,  and 
increases  with  it ;  hence  we  might  infer  that  there  is  more  Love 
among  the  women  of  America  than  among  those  of  any  other  country, 
even  if  this  were  not  so  patent  from  the  greater  number  of  Love- 
matches  and  various  subtle  signs  known  to  international  observers. 

And  as  the  sweetest  pleasure  and  goad  of  Love  lies  in  the  con- 
viction that  it  is  really  returned,  man's  Love  is  thus  doubled  in 
ardour  through  woman's  responsive  sympathy. 


800  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

(2)  That  Courtship  proper  is  longer  than  in  England,  and 
engagement  shorter,  is  a  circumstance  in  favour  of  America.     For 
nothing  adds  so  much  to  the  ardour  of  Love  as  the  uncertainty 
which  prevails  during  Courtship ;  whereas,  after  engagement,  all 
these  alternate  hopes  and  doubts,  confidences  and  jealousies,  are 
quieted,  and  the  ship  approaches  the  still  waters  of  the  harbour  of 
matrimony,  which  may  be  quite  as  deep  but  are  less  sublime  and 
romantic  than  mid-ocean,  with  its  possibilities  of  storm  and  ship- 
wreck. 

Moreover,  the  longer  the  time  of  tentative  Courtship,  the  fewer 
are  the  chances  of  a  mistake  being  made  in  selecting  a  sympathetic 
spouse. 

In  Germany  an  engagement  is  so  conclusive  an  affair  that  it  is 
announced  in  the  papers,  and  cards  are  sent  out  as  at  a  wedding. 
In  America  we  meet  with  the  other  extreme,  for  it  is  not  very 
unusual  for  a  couple  to  be  engaged  some  time  before  even  the 
parents  know  it.  Though  there  is  such  a  thing  as  breach  of 
promise  suits  against  fickle  young  men,  such  engagements,  if 
unsatisfactory  to  either  side,  are  commonly  broken  off  amicably. 
And,  as  one  of  Mr.  Howells's  characters  remarks  in  Indian  Summer  : 
"  A  broken  engagement  may  be  a  bad  thing  in  some  cases,  but  I 
am  inclined  to  think  it  is  the  very  best  thing  that  could  happen 
in  most  cases  where  it  happens.  The  evil  is  done  long  before  j  the 
broken  engagement  is  merely  sanative,  and  so  far  beneficent." 

Were  engagements  less  readily  dissolved,  divorces  would  be 
more  frequent  even  than  they  are  now. 

(3)  Parental  dictation  is  almost  unknown  in  America ;  nowhere 
else  have  young  men  and  women  such  absolute  freedom  to  choose 
their  own  soul-mate.     Hence  Individual  Preference,  on  which  the 
ardour  of  Love  depends  in  the  highest  degree,  has  full  sway.     The 
comparative  absence  of  barriers  of  rank  and  social  grade  also  makes 
it  easier  for  a  man  to  find  and  claim  his  real  Juliet. 

(4)  This  dependence   of  Love  on   Individualisation  gives  it 
another  advantage  in  America.     For  nowhere  is  there  so  great  a 
mixture  of  nationalities  as  here ;  and,  away  from  home,  a  national 
peculiarity  of  feature  or  manners  has  a  sort  of  individualising  effect. 
Till  we  get  used  to  such  national  peculiarities  through  their  con- 
stant recurrence  we  are  apt  to  judge  almost  every  woman  in  a  new 
city  attractive.     From  this  point  of  view  Love  may  be  defined  as 
an  instinctive  longing  to  absorb  national  traits,  and  blend  them  all 
in  the  one  cosmopolitan  type  of  perfect  Personal  Beauty. 

(5)  There  are  beautiful  women  in  all  countries  of  the  world, 
but  no  country  has  so  many  pretty  girls  as  America,     Money  and 


AMERICAN  LOVE  301 

rank  find  it  hard  to  compete  with  such  loveliness,  hence  Love  has 
its  own  way.  Here  alone  is  it  possible  to  find  heiresses  who  have 
failed  to  get  married  through  lack  of  Beauty.  Personal  Beauty  is 
the  great  matchmaker  in  America ;  and  thus  it  comes  that  Beauty 
is  ever  inherited  and  multiplied.  For  Love  is  the  cause  of  Beauty 
as  Beauty  is  the  cause  of  Love. 

One  more  characteristic  of  American  Love  remains  to  be  noted 
— the  most  unique  of  all.  American  women  are  of  all  women  in  the 
world  the  most  self-conscious,  and  have  the  keenest  sense  of  humour. 
To  these  quick-witted  damsels  the  sentimental  sublimities  of  amor- 
OU3  Hyperbole,  which  may  touch  the  heart  of  a  naive  German  or 
Italian  girl,  are  apt  to  appear  dangerously  near  the  ludicrous; 
hence  an  American  lover,  if  he  is  clever  enough,  deliberately  covers 
the  step  which  separates  the  sublime  from  the  ridiculous.  He 
gilds  the  gold  of  his  compliments  by  using  the  form  of  playful 
exaggeration,  which  is  the  more  easy  to  him  because  exaggeration 
is  a  national  form  of  American  humour.  Mr.  Howells's  heroes 
often  make  love  in  this  fashion.  The  lover  in  The  Lady  of  the 
Aroostook  spices  his  flatteries  with  open  burlesque,  and  succeeds 
admirably  with  this  new  Ars  Amoris ;  and  Colville  in  Indian 
Summer  says  to  Imogene  :  "  Come,  I'll  go,  of  course,  Imogene.  A 
fancy-ball  to  please  you  is  a  very  different  thing  from  a  fancy-ball 
in  the  abstract." 

"  Oh,  what  nice  things  you  say !  Do  you  know,  I  always 
admired  your  compliments  ?  I  think  they're  the  most  charming 
compliments  in  the  world." 

"I  don't  think  they're  half  so  pretty  as  yours;  but  they're 
more  sincere." 

"  No,  honestly.  They  flatter,  and  at  the  same  time  they  make 
fun  of  the  flattery  a  little ;  they  make  a  person  feel  that  you  like 
them  even  while  you  laugh  at  them." 

Perfect  success  in  this  form  of  flattery  requires  a  talent  for 
epigram.  Not  many,  unfortunately,  even  in  America,  are  poets 
and  wits  at  the  same  time,  like  Mr.  Howells;  but  there  is  an 
abundance  of  clever  compliments  nevertheless,  and  they  are  apt  to 
assume  the  form  of  playful  exaggeration. 


SCHOPENHAUER'S  THEORY  OF  LOVE 

A  first  hasty  perusal  of  Schopenhauer's  brilliant  essay  on  the 
"  Metaphysics  of  Sexual  Love "  (in  the  second  volume  of  his 
Welt  als  Wille  ^md  Vorgtelhmg)  will  dispose  moat  readers  to 


802  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

agree  with  Duhring  that  the  great  pessimist  "  makes  war  on  love." 
But  a  more  careful  consideration  of  his  profound  thoughts  shows 
that  this  is  not  the  case,  notwithstanding  his  habitual  cynical 
tone. 

In  the  first  place,  his  theory  can  do  no  possible  harm,  because, 
as  he  himself  admits,  no  lover  will  ever  believe  in  it.  Secondly, 
the  gist  of  Schopenhauer's  theory  is  to  show  that  a  lover  is  the 
most  noble  and  unselfish  martyr  in  the  world,  because  his  usual 
attitude  and  fate  is  self-sacrifice. 

LOVE   IS  AN   ILLUSION 

The  fundamental  truth  which  Schopenhauer  claims  to  have 
discovered  is  that  love  is  an  illusion — an  instinctive  belief  on  the 
lover's  part  that  his  life's  happiness  absolutely  depends  on  his 
union  with  his  beloved ;  whereas,  in  truth,  a  love-match  commonly 
leads  to  lifelong  conjugal  misery.  The  lover,  on  reaching  the  goal 
so  eagerly  striven  for,  finds  himself  disappointed,  and  realises,  to 
his  consternation,  that  he  has  been  the  dupe  of  a  blind  instinct. 
Quien  se  casa  por  amores,  ha  de  vivir  con  dolores,  says  a  Spanish 
proverb  ("to  marry  for  love  is  to  live  in  misery"):  and  this 
doctrine  Schopenhauer  re-echoes  in  a  dozen  different  forms :  "  It 
is  not  only  disappointed  love-passion  that  occasionally  has  a  tragic 
end ;  successful  love  likewise  leads  more  commonly  to  misery  than 
to  happiness."  "Marriages  based  on  love  commonly  end  un- 
happily," etc. 

INDIVIDUALS   SACRIFICED   TO   THE   SPECIES 

The  reason  of  this  curious  fact  is  given  in  this  sentence: 
"  Love-marriages  are  formed  in  the  interest  of  the  species,  not  of 
the  individuals.  True,  the  parties  concerned  imagine  that  they 
are  providing  for  their  own  happiness ;  but  their  real  [unconscious] 
aim  is  something  foreign  to  their  own  selves — namely,  the  pro- 
creation of  an  individual  whose  existence  becomes  possible  only 
through  their  marriage." 

What  urges  a  man  on  to  this  sacrifice  of  individual  happiness 
to  the  welfare  of  his  offspring  is,  as  already  intimated,  a  blind 
instinct  known  as  Love.  The  universal  Will  (Schopenhauer's 
fetish,  or  name  for  an  impersonal  deity  underlying  all  phenomena) 
has  implanted  this  blind  instinct  in  man,  for  the  same  reason  that 
it  implants  so  many  other  instincts  in  various  animals — to  induce 
the  parents  to  undergo  any  amount  of  labour,  and  even  danger  to 


SCHOPENHAUER'S  THEORY  OF  LOVE  303 

life,  for  the  sake  of  benefiting  the  offspring,  and  thus  preserving 
the  species.  All  these  animals,  like  the  lovers,  are  urged  on 
blindly  to  sacrifice  themselves  in  the  belief  that  they  are  doing  it 
for  their  own  pleasure  and  benefit ;  whereas  it  is  all  in  the 
interest  of  their  offspring. 

Why  was  the  Will  compelled  to  implant  this  blind  instinct  in 
man  *?  Because  man  is  so  selfish  wherever  guided  by  reason,  that 
it  would  have  been  unwise  to  entrust  so  important  a  matter  as 
the  welfare  of  coming  generations  to  his  intellect  and  prudence. 
Prudence  would  tell  young  people  to  choose  not  the  most  attrac- 
tive and  healthy  partners,  who  would  be  able  to  transmit  their 
excellence  to  the  next  generation,  but  the  ones  who  are  most 
liberally  supplied  with  money  and  useful  friends.  That  is,  they 
would  invariably  look  out  first  for  "  Number  One,"  indifferent  to 
the  deluge  that  might  come  after  them.  It  was  to  neutralise  this 
selfishness  that  the  Will  created  the  instinct  of  Love,  which 
impels  a  man  to  marry  not  the  woman  who  will  make  him  the 
most  happy  and  comfortable,  but  whose  qualities,  combined  with 
his  own,  will  be  likely  to  produce  a  harmonious,  well-made  group 
of  children. 

Schopenhauer's  Will,  it  must  be  understood,  is  an  aesthetic 
sort  of  a  chap.  He  has  his  hobbies,  and  one  of  these  hobbies  is 
the  desire  to  preserve  the  species  in  its  typical  purity  and  beauty. 
There  are  a  thousand  accidents  of  climate,  vice,  disease,  etc.,  that 
tend  to  vitiate  the  type  of  each  species ;  but  Love  strives  for  ever 
to  restore  a  harmonious  balance,  by  producing  a  mutual  infatua- 
tion in  two  beings  whose  combined  (and  opposite)  defects  will 
neutralise  one  another  in  the  offspring. 

SOURCES   OF   LOVE 

More  definitely  speaking,  there  are  three  ways  in  which  the 
Will  preserves  the  purity  of  its  types — three  ways  in  which  it 
inspires  the  Love  whose  duty  it  is  to  achieve  this  result.  Physical 
Beauty  is  the  first  thing  desired  by  the  lover,  because  that  is  the 
expression  of  typical  perfection.  Secondly,  he  may  be  influenced 
by  such  Psychic  Traits  as  will  blend  well  with  his  own ;  and 
thirdly,  he  will  be  attracted  by  perfections  (or  imperfections) 
which  are  the  opposite  of  his  own.  These  three  sources  must  be 
considered  briefly  in  detail. 

(1)  Physical  Beauty. — The  most  important  attribute  of 
Beauty,  in  the  lover's  eye,  is  Youth.  Men  prefer  the  age  from 
eighteen  to  twenty-eight  in  a  woman;  while  women  give  the 


304  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAbTY 

preference  to  a  man  aged  from  thirty  to  thirty-five,  which 
represents  the  acme  of  his  virility.  Youth  without  Beauty  may 
still  inspire  Love ;  not  so  Beauty  without  Youth. 

Health  ranks  next  in  importance.  Acute  disease  is  only  a 
temporary  disadvantage,  whereas  chronic  disease  repels  the 
amorous  affections,  for  the  reason  that  it  is  likely  to  be  trans- 
mitted to  the  next  generation. 

A  fine  framework  or  skeleton  is  the  third  desideratum.  Be- 
sides age  and  disease,  nothing  proves  so  fatal  to  the  chances  of 
inspiring  Love  as  deformity  :  "  The  most  charming  face  does  not 
atone  for  it ;  on  the  contrary,  even  the  ugliest  face  is  preferred  if 
allied  with  a  straight  growth  of  the  body." 

A  certain  plumpness  or  fulness  of  flesh  is  the  next  thing 
considered  in  sexual  selection  ;  for  this  is  an  indication  of  Health, 
and  promises  a  sound  progeny.  Excessive  leanness  is  repulsive, 
and  so  is  excessive  stoutness,  which  is  often  an  indication  of 
sterility.  "  A  well-developed  bust  has  a  magic  effect  on  a  man." 
What  attracts  women  to  men  is  especially  muscular  development, 
because  that  is  a  quality  in  which  they  are  commonly  deficient, 
and  for  which  the  children  will  accordingly  have  to  rely  on  the 
father.  Women  may  marry  an  ugly  man,  but  never  one  who  is 
unmanly. 

Facial  beauty  ranks  last  in  importance,  according  to  Schopen- 
hauer. Here  too  the  skeleton  is  first  considered  in  sexual 
selection.  The  mouth  must  be  small,  the  chin  projecting,  "  a 
slight  curve  of  the  nose,  upwards  or  downwards,  has  decided  the 
fate  of  innumerable  girls ;  and  justly,  for  the  type  of  the  species 
is  at  stake."  The  eyes  and  the  forehead,  finally,  are  closely 
associated  with  intellectual  qualities. 

(2)  Psychic  Traits. — What  charms  women  in  men  is  pre- 
eminently courage  and  energy,  besides  frankness  and  amiability. 
"  Stupidity  is  no  disadvantage  with  women :  indeed,  it  is  more 
likely  that  superior  intellectual  power,  and  especially  genius,  as 
being  an  abnormal  trait,  may  make  an  unfavourable  impression  on 
them.  Hence  we  so  often  see  an  ugly,  stupid,  and  coarse  man 
preferred  by  women  to  a  refined,  clever,  and  amiable  man." 
When  women  claim  to  have  fallen  in  love  with  a  man's  intellect, 
it  is  either  affectation  or  vanity.  Wedlock  is  a  union  of  hearts, 
not  of  heads ;  and  its  object  is  not  entertaining  conversation,  but 
providing  for  the  next  generation.  This  part  of  Schopenhauer's 
theory  is  evidently  an  outcome  of  his  doctrine  that  children  inherit 
their  intellectual  qualities  from  the  mother,  and  their  character 
from  the  father.  Hence  the  feeling  that  they  are  capable  of 


SCHOPENHAUER'S  THEORY  OF  LOVE  805 

supplying  their  children  with  sufficient  intellect  is  part  of  the 
feminine  Love-instinct,  and  makes  women  indifferent  to  the 
presence  or  absence  of  those  qualities  in  men. 

It  does  not  follow  from  all  this  that  a  sensible  man  may  not 
reflect  on  his  chosen  one's  character,  or  she  on  his  intellectual 
abilities,  before  marriage.  Such  reflection  leads  to  marriages  of 
reason,  but  not  to  Love -marriages,  which  alone  are  here  under 
consideration. 

(3)  Complementary  Qualities. — The  physical  and  mental  attri- 
butes considered  under  (1)  and  (2)  are  those  which  commonly 
inspire  Love.  But  there  are  cases  where  perfect  Beauty  is  less 
potent  to  inflame  the  passions  than  deviations  from  the  normal 
type. 

"  Ordinarily  it  is  not  the  regular  perfect  beauties  that  inspire 
the  great  passions,"  says  Schopenhauer;  and  this  seems  to  be 
borne  out  by  the  experience  of  Byron,  who  says  :  "  I  believe  there 
are  few  men  who,  in  the  course  of  their  observations  on  life,  have 
not  perceived  that  it  is  not  the  greatest  female  beauty  who  forms 
[inspires]  the  longest  and  the  strongest  passions." 

How  is  this  to  be  accounted  for  1  By  the  anxiety  of  Nature 
(or  the  Will)  to  neutralise  imperfections  in  one  individual  by  wed- 
ding them  to  another's  excesses  in  the  opposite  direction ;  as  an 
acid  is  neutralised  by  combining  it  with  an  alkali.  The  greater 
the  shortcoming  the  more  ardent  will  be  the  infatuation  if  a  person 
is  found  exactly  adapted  for  its  neutralisation.  The  weaker  a 
woman  is,  for  example,  in  her  muscular  system,  the  more  apt  will 
she  be  to  fall  violently  in  love  with  an  athlete.  Short  men  have 
a  decided  partiality  for  tall  women,  and  vice  versd.  Blondes 
almost  always  desire  brunettes ;  and  if  the  reverse  does  not  hold 
true,  this  is  owing  to  the  fact,  he  says,  that  the  original  colour 
of  the  human  complexion  was  not  light  but  dark.  A  light  com- 
plexion has  indeed  become  second  nature  to  us,  but  less  so  the 
other  features ;  and  "  in  love  nature  strives  to  return  to  dark  hair 
and  brown  eyes,  as  the  primitive  type." 

Again,  persons  afflicted  with  a  pug-nose  take  a  special  delight 
in  falcon-noses  and  parrot-faces ;  and  those  who  are  excessively 
long  and  slim  admire  those  who  are  abnormally  short  and  even 
stumpy.  So  with  temperaments ;  each  one  preferring  the  opposite 
to  his  or  her  own.  True,  if  a  person  is  quite  perfect  in  any  one 
respect,  he  does  not  exactly  prefer  the  corresponding  imperfection 
in  another,  but  he  is  more  readily  reconciled  to  it. 

Throughout  his  essay,  Schopenhauer  tacitly  assumes  that  the 
parental  peculiarities  are  fused  or  blended  equally  in  the  offspring, 


806  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

and  that  this  blending  is  what  the  Will  aims  at.  But  on  this 
point  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has  some  remarks,  in  his  essay  on 
"Personal  Beauty,"  which  directly  contradict  Schopenhauer,  of 
whose  theory,  however,  he  does  not  seem  to  have  been  cognisant : — 

"The  fact,"  he  says,  "that  the  forms  and  qualities  of  any 
offspring  are  not  a  mean  between  the  forms  and  qualities  of  its 
parents,  but  a  mixture  of  them,  is  illustrated  in  every  family. 
The  features  and  peculiarities  of  a  child  are  separately  referred  by 
observers  to  father  and  mother  respectively — nose  and  mouth  to 
this  side ;  colour  of  the  hair  and  eyes  to  that ;  this  moral  peculi- 
arity to  the  first ;  this  intellectual  one  to  the  second — and  so  with 
contour  and  idiosyncrasies  of  body.  Manifestly,  if  each  organ  or 
faculty  in  a  child  was  an  average  of  the  two  developments  of  such 
organ  or  faculty  in  the  parents,  it  would  follow  that  all  brothers 
and  sisters  should  be  alike ;  or  should,  at  any  rate,  differ  no  more 
than  their  parents  differed  from  year  to  year.  So  far,  however, 
from  finding  that  this  is  the  case,  we  find  not  only  that  great 
irregularities  are  produced  by  intermixture  of  traits,  but  that  there 
is  no  constancy  in  the  mode  of  intermixture,  or  the  extent  of  varia- 
tions produced  by  it. 

"  This  imperfect  union  of  parental  constitutions  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  offspring  is  yet  more  clearly  illustrated  by  the  reappearance 
of  peculiarities  traceable  to  bygone  generations.  Forms,  disposi- 
tions, and  diseases,  possessed  by  distant  progenitors,  habitually 
come  out  from  time  to  time  in  descendants.  Some  single  feature, 
or  some  solitary  tendency,  will  again  and  again  show  itself  after 
being  apparently  lost.  It  is  notoriously  thus  with  gout,  scrofula, 
and  insanity." 

Again,  unite  a  pure  race  "with  another  equally  pure,  but 
adapted  to  different  conditions  and  having  a  correspondingly  dif- 
ferent physique,  face,  and  morale,  and  there  will  occur  in  the 
descendants  not  a  homogeneous  mean  between  the  two  constitu- 
tions, but  a  seemingly  irregular  combination  of  characteristics  of 
the  one  with  characteristics  of  the  other— one  feature  traceable  to 
this  race,  a  second  to  that,  and  a  third  uniting  the  attributes  of 
both ;  while  in  disposition  and  intellect  there  will  be  found  a  like 
medley  of  the  two  originals." 

The  fact  that  the  more  remote  ancestry  must  be  taken  into 
account  besides  the  parents,  in  considering  the  traits  of  the  off- 
spring, is  one  which  Mr.  Galton  has  done  much  to  emphasise,  and 
which  Schopenhauer  completely  ignores.  It  tells  against  the 
metaphysical  part  of  his  theory ;  for  all  the  efforts  of  the  Will 
to  merge  opposite  characters  into  homogeneous  traits  must  prove 


SCHOPENHAUER'S  THEORY  OF  LOVE  307 

futile  if  a  blue-eyed  man,  for  instance,  who  marries  a  black-eyed 
girl,  finds  that  their  children  have  neither  the  father's  blue  nor  the 
mother's  black,  but  the  grand  mother's  gray  eyes. 

Yet  in  the  long  run  diverse  traits  of  figure  and  physiognomy 
ds  baud  to  a  harmonious  fusion.  Though  a  man  with  a  prominent 
n;se,  irhich  he  inherited  from  his  father,  is  likely  to  transmit  it 
to  his  son,  though  his  wife  may  have  a  snub-nose,  yet  there  will 
be  a  slight  modification  even  in  the  son's  organ ;  and  if  the  son 
keeps  up  the  tradition  of  marrying  a  snub-nosed  girl,  and  his 
children  follow  his  example,  the  chances  are  that  in  a  few  genera- 
tions the  nose  of  that  family  will  be  a  feature  of  moderate  size  and 
classic  proportions.  The  very  fact  emphasised  by  Mr.  Galton  that 
all  the  ancestral  influences  count,  will  here  aid  the  ultimate  fusion. 
Conspicuous  instances  of  the  long-continued  prevalence  of  a  par- 
ticular nose — or  other  feature — may  be  accounted  for  by  the  fact 
that  other  kinds  of  that  organ  were  rare  in  the  vicinity,  or  that 
marriage  was  decided  by  so  many  other  considerations  that  the 
dimensions  of  one  organ  could  not  come  into  consideration,  much 
as  the  bride  or  groom  might  have  preferred  an  improvement  in 
that  respect. 

So  far  as  Schopenhauer's  theory  concerns  only  the  fact  that 
Love  is  apt  to  be  based  on  complementary  qualities,  he  is  doubt- 
less correct ;  but  it  needs  no  erratic  metaphysical  fetish,  as  a  deus 
ex  machina,  to  account  for  that  fact.  A  simple  application  of 
psychologic  principles  explains  the  whole  mystery. 

In  ths  first  place,  nothing  could  be  more  remote  from  the  truth 
than  the  cynical  notion  that  every  woman  considers  herself  a 
Venus.  She  may,  on  the  whole,  consider  herself  equal  to  the 
average  of  Beauty ;  but  if  she  has  any  special  fault — a  mouth  too 
large  or  too  small,  an  upper  lip  too  high,  a  nose  too  flat  or  too 
prominent,  too  much  or  too  little  flesh,  excessive  height  or  short- 
ness— she  is  not  only  conscious  of  the  defect,  but  morbidly  con- 
scious of  it,  and  uses  every  possible  device  to  conceal  it.  Thus 
constantly  brooding  over  her  misfortune  her  mind,  by  a  natural 
reaction,  will  conceive  a  special  admiration  for  an  organ  that 
exceeds  the  line  of  Beauty  in  the  opposite  direction.  Every  day 
one  hears  a  petite  girl  admiring  a  specially  tall  woman ;  and  this 
admiration  will  prompt  her,  other  things  being  equal,  to  fall  in 
love  with  a  tall  man. 

Secondly,  familiarity  breeds  indifference  to  one's  own  charms, 
and  a  disposition  to  admire  what  we  lack  ourselves. 

Novelty  comes  into  play.  A  Northern  blonde  among  a  nation 
of  brunettes  cannot  fail  to  slay  hearts  by  the  hundred,  while  the 


808  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

mystic  flashes  of  a  Spanish  woman's  black  eyes  are  fatal  to  every 
Northern  visitor. 

Nations,  like  individuals,  admire  and  desire  what  they  lack. 
The  Germans  and  the  English  are  deficient  in  grace — hence  that 
quality  is  what  chiefly  charms  them  in  the  French,  who  have 
much  more  of  it  than  of  Beauty,  and  in  the  Spanish.  Byron  was 
BO  n.tich  smitten  with  the  sun-mellowed  complexions  and  the 
graceful  proportions  and  gait  of  the  Spanish  maidens,  that  he 
became  quite  unjust  to  his  own  lovely  countrywomen — 

*'  Who  round  the  North  for  paler  dames  would  seek  ? 
How  poor  their  forms  appear  !    How  languid,  wan,  and  weak  ! " 

Were  savages  susceptible  to  Love,  it  might  be  suggested  that 
their  practice  of  exogamy,  or  marrying  a  woman  from  another 
tribe,  had  something  to  do  with  their  admiration  of  novelty  and 
complementary  qualities ;  but  we  know  that  they  do  not  admire 
such  qualities,  but  only  such  typical  traits  as  prevail  among  their 
own  women,  and  these,  moreover,  in  an  exaggerated  form.  This 
is  one  reason  why  savages  are  so  ugly.  They  have  no  Eoniantic 
Love  to  improve  their  Personal  Beauty  by  fusing  heterogeneous 
defects  into  homogeneous  perfections. 

Thus  we  may  freely  endorse  Schopenhauer's  doctrine  regarding 
the  benefits  derived  by  the  offspring  (ultimately,  in  several  genera- 
tions) from  marriages  based  on  complementary  Love,  without 
bowing  down  before  his  fetish — a  fetish  which  appears  doubly 
objectionable  because  it  is  old-fashioned ;  i.e.  it  strives  to  "  main- 
tain the  type  of  the  species  in  its  primitive  purity,"  whereas 
modern  science  teaches  that  this  "primitive  type"  of  human 
beauty  had  a  very  simian  aspect. 

Nor  need  we  at  all  accept  the  pessimistic  aspect  of  his  theory 
— the  notion  that  Love  is  an  illusion,  and  that  Love-marriages 
commonly  end  unhappily,  the  lover  sacrificing  himself  for  his 
progeny. 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  in  his  Sociology,  elaborates  an  idea  which 
so  curiously  leads  up  to  this  phase  of  Schopenhauer's  doctrine  that 
it  must  be  briefly  referred  to  for  its  evolutionary  suggestiveness. 

Among  the  lowest  animals— the  microscopic  protozoa — the 
individual,  as  he  remarks,  is  sacrificed  after  a  few  hours  of  life, 
by  breaking  up  into  two  new  individuals,  or  into  a  number  of 
germs  which  produce  a  new  generation.  The  parents  are  here 
entirely  sacrificed  to  the  interests  of  the  young  and  the  species. 
As  we  ascend  in  the  scale  of  life  this  sacrifice  of  parents  to  the 
young  and  the  species  becomes  less  and  less  prevalent.  Among 


SCHOPENHAUER'S  THEORY  OF  LOVE  309 

birds,  for  instance,  "The  lives  of  the  parents  are  but  partially 
subordinated  at  times  when  the  young  are  being  reared.  And 
then  there  are  long  intervals  between  breeding-seasons,  during 
which  the  lives  of  parents  are  carried  on  for  their  own  sakes.  .  .  . 
In  proportion  as  organisms  become  higher  in  their  structures  and 
powers,  they  are  individually  less  sacrificed  to  the  maintenance  of 
the  species;  and  the  implication  is  that  in  the  highest  type  of 
man  this  sacrifice  is  reduced  to  a  minimum." 

Here  is  the  point  where  Schopenhauer,  had  he  been  an  evolu- 
tionist, might  have  dovetailed  his  theory  with  Spencer's,  by  saying 
that  in  man  it  is  no  longer  the  life  of  the  individual,  or  most  of 
his  time,  that  is  sacrificed,  but  merely  his  conjugal  happiness, 
which  the  Love-instinct  induces  him  unconsciously  to  barter  for 
the  superior  physical  and  mental  beauty  of  his  offspring. 

Unfortunately,  Schopenhauer  did  not  take  any  pains  to  verify 
his  theory  by  testing  it  by  vulgar  facts.  There  are  plenty  of 
unhappy  marriages,  but  no  one  who  will  search  his  memory  can 
fail  to  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  vast  majority  of  them  are 
cases  where  money  or  rank  and  not  Love  supplied  the  motive  of 
an  unsympathetic  union.  Though  Conjugal  Affection  consists  of 
a  different  group  of  emotions  from  Romantic  Love,  yet  there  is  an 
affinity  between  them ;  and  it  is  not  likely  that  Conjugal  Love 
will  ever  supervene  where  before  marriage  there  was  an  entire 
absence  of  sympathy  and  adoration.  Even  an  imprudent  Love- 
match  which  leads  to  poverty— is  it  not  preferable  to  a  «nariage 
de  convenance,  which  leads  to  lifelong  indifference  and  ennui? 
Is  it  not  better  to  have  one  month  of  ecstatic  bliss  in  life  than  to 
live  and  die  without  ever  knowing  life's  highest  rapture  ? 

Again,  the  French  marry  for  money  and  social  convenience, 
and  their  children  are  ugly ;  the  Americans  marry  for  Love,  and 
have  the  most  beautiful  children  in  the  world.  Is  it  not  more 
conducive  to  conjugal  happiness  to  know  that  one  has  lovely 
children  and  that  the  race  is  increasing,  than  to  have  ugly  children 
and  to  know  that  the  race  is  dying  out  1 

Love-matches  would  never  end  unhappily  if  the  lovers  would 
take  proper  care  of  their  own  happiness  by  transfusing  the  habits 
of  Courtship  into  conjugal  life,  as  elsewhere  explained  in  this 
book. 

Schopenhauer's  whole  argument  is  vitiated  by  the  fact  that  it 
is  chiefly  the  physical  complementary  qualities  that  inspire  Love, 
not  the  mental — the  latter,  in  fact,  being  barely  noticed  by  him. 
Mental  divergence  might  indeed  occasionally  lead  to  an  unhappy 
marriage,  but  physical  divergence — the  fact  that  he  is  large  and 


810  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

blond,  she  small  and  a  brunette — cannot  possibly  lead  to  matri- 
monial discord.  This  knocks  the  whole  bottom  out  of  Schopen- 
hauer's erotic  pessimism.  The  only  sense  in  which  Love  is  an 
illusion  is  in  its  Hyperbolic  phase — the  notion  that  the  beloved  is 
superior  to  all  other  mortals  ;  and  that  is  a  very  harmless  illusion. 

Schopenhauer's  pessimism,  it  should  be  added,  is  greatly  miti- 
gated by  the  poetic  halo  of  martyrdom  with  which  he  invests  the 
lover's  head.  Society  and  public  opinion,  he  points  out,  applaud 
him  for  instinctively  preferring  the  welfare  of  the  next  generation 
to  his  own  comfort.  "  For  is  not  the  exact  determination  of  the 
individualities  of  the  next  generation  a  much  higher  and  nobler 
object  than  those  ecstatic  feelings  of  the  lovers,  and  their  super- 
sensual  soap-bubbles  1 "  It  is  this  that  invests  Love  with  its 
poetic  character.  There  is  one  thing  only  that  justifies  tears  in  a 
man,  and  that  is  the  loss  of  his  Love,  for  in  that  he  bewails  not 
his  own  loss  but  the  loss  of  the  species. 

Apart  from  the  suggestive  details  of  his  essay,  Schopenhauer's 
merit  and  originality  lies,  first,  in  his  having  pointed  out  that 
Love  becomes  more  intense  the  more  it  is  individualised ;  secondly, . 
in  emphasising  the  fact  that  iu  match-making  it  is  not  the  happiness 
of  the  to-be-married  couple  that  should  be  chiefly  consulted,  but 
the  consequences  of  their  union  to  the  offspring;  thirdly,  in 
dwelling  on  the  important  truth  that  Love  is  a  cause  of  Beauty, 
because  its  aim  always  is  either  to  perpetuate  existing  Beauty 
through  hereditary  transmission,  or  to  create  new  Beauty  by 
fusing  two  imperfect  individuals  into  a  being  in  whom  their  short- 
comings mutually  neutralise  one  another. 

Love,  however,  is  only  one  source  of  Personal  Beauty.  Per- 
sonal Beauty  has  four  sources ;  and  these  must  now  be  considered 
in  succession,  in  the  order  which  roughly  indicates  their  succes- 
sive evolution — Health,  Crossing,  Love,  and  Mental  Eefinement. 

The  remainder  of  this  work  will  be  devoted  exclusively  to  the 
subject  of  Personal  Beauty,  as  it  influences  and  is  influenced  by 
Romantic  Love.  And  here,  as  in  the  preceding  pages,  I  shall 
always  cite  the  ipsissima  verba  of  the  greatest  specialists  who 
have  written  on  any  particular  branch  of  this  subject. 


FOUR  SOURCES  OF  BEAUTY 

I* — HEALTH 

Plants,   Animals,   Savages. — In   two  of  the  most  exquisite 
passages,  not  only  in  his  own  works,  but  in  all  English  literature, 


FOUB  SOURCES  OF  BEAUTY  811 

Mr.  Ruskin  has  emphasised  the  dependence  of  physical  beauty  in 
plants  on  their  healthy  appearance,  and  the  independence  of  this 
beauty  on  any  idea  of  direct  utility  to  man. 

"  It  is  a  matter  of  easy  demonstration,"  he  says,  "  that,  setting 
the  characters  of  typical  beauty  aside,  the  pleasure  afforded  by 
every  organic  form  is  in  proportion  to  its  appearance  of  healthy 
vital  energy ;  as  in  a  rose-bush,  setting  aside  all  considerations  of 
gradated  flushing  of  colour  and  fair  folding  of  line,  which  it  shares 
with  the  cloud  or  the  snow-wreath,  we  find  in  and  through  all  this 
certain  signs  pleasant  and  acceptable  as  signs  of  life  and  enjoyment 
in  the  particular  individual  plant  itself.  Every  leaf  and  stalk  is 
seen  to  have  a  function,  to  be  constantly  exercising  that  function, 
and,  as  it  seems,  solely  for  the  good  and  enjoyment  of  the  plant. 
It  is  true  that  reflection  will  show  us  that  the  plant  is  not  living 
for  itself  alone,  that  its  life  is  one  of  benefaction,  that  it  gives  as 
well  as  receives,  but  no  sense  of  this  whatever  mingles  with  our 
perception  of  physical  beauty  in  its  forms.  Those  forms  which 
appear  to  be  necessary  to  its  health,  the  symmetry  of  its  leaflets, 
the  smoothness  of  its  stalks,  the  vivid  green  of  its  shoots,  are 
looked  upon  by  us  as  signs  of  the  plant's  own  happiness  and  per- 
fection •  they  are  useless  to  us,  except  as  they  give  us  pleasure  in 
our  sympathising  with  that  of  the  plant,  and  if  we  see  a  leaf 
withered  or  shrunk  or  worm-eaten,  we  say  it  is  ugly,  and  feel  it 
to  be  most  painful,  not  because  it  hurts  ?«,  but  because  it  seems 
to  hurt  the  plant,  and  conveys  to  us  an  idea  of  pain  and  disease 
and  failure  of  life  in  it" 

"  The  bending  tree,  waving  to  and  fro  in  the  wind  above  the 
waterfall,  is  beautiful  because  it  is  happy,  though  it  is  perfectly 
useless  to  us.  The  same  trunk,  hewn  down  and  thrown  across  the 
stream,  has  lost  its  beauty.  It  serves  as  a  bridge, — it  has  become 
useful ;  it  lives  not  for  itself,  and  its  beauty  is  gone,  or  what  it 
retains  is  purely  typical,  dependent  on  its  lines  and  colours,  not  its 
functions.  Saw  it  into  planks,  and  though  now  adapted  to  become 
permanently  useful,  its  whole  beauty  is  lost  for  ever,  or  to  be 
regained  only  in  part  when  decay  and  ruin  shall  have  withdrawn 
it  again  from  use,  and  left  it  to  receive  from  the  hand  of  JSTaturc 
the  velvet  moss  and  varied  lichen,  which  may  again  suggest  ideas 
of  inherent  happiness,  and  tint  its  mouldering  sides  with  hues  of 
life." 

In  the  animal  world  we  find  the  same  dependence  of  Beauty 
upon  Health.  As  Mr.  Wallace  has  shown,  "  colour  and  ornament 
are  strictly  correlated  with  health,  vigour,  and  general  fitness  tc 
survive."  It  is  the  superior  vitality,  vigour,  and  vivacity  of 


312  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

certain  male  animals  that  leads  the  choicest  females  to  prefer  them 
to  others  less  favoured ;  and  thus  it  happens  that,  thanks  to  the 
dependence  of  Beauty  on  Health,  animals  have  become  more  and 
more  beautiful.  Moreover,  it  is  Love  in  its  primitive  form  that 
urges  animals  to  prefer  those  that  are  most  healthy.  And  thus 
we  have  the  three  great  agents  acting  and  reacting  upon  one 
another.  Health  produces  Beauty,  and  together  they  inspire  Love; 
while  Love  selects  Health,  and  thus  preserves  and  multiplies 
Beauty.  But  this  whole  subject  has  been  so  fully  discussed  in  the 
chapter  on  Love  among  Animals  that  it  is  needless  to  recapitulate 
the  facts  here. 

Concerning  savages,  there  is  a  prevalent  notion  that,  owing  to 
their  free  and  easy  life  in  the  forests,  they  are  healthier  on  the 
average  than  civilised  mankind.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however, 
they  are  as  inferior  to  us  in  Health  as  in  Beauty.  Their  constant 
exposure  and  irregular  feeding  habits,  their  neglect  and  ignorance 
of  every  hygienic  law,  in  conjunction  with  their  vicious  lives,  their 
arbitrary  mutilations  of  various  parts,  and  their  selection  of  inferior 
forms,  prevent  their  bodies  from  assuming  the  regular  and  delicate 
proportions  which  we  regard  as  essential  to  Beauty.  They  arrive 
at  maturity  at  an  earlier  age,  and  lose  their  vitality  sooner  than 
we  do.  "  Decrepitude,"  says  Dr.  Topinard,  "  shows  itself  sooner 
in  some  races  than  in  others.  The  Australians  and  Bosjesmans 
are  old  men  at  a  period  when  the  European  is  in  the  full  enjoyment 
of  his  faculties,  both  physical  and  intellectual.  The  Japanese 
the  same,  according  to  Dr.  Krishaber,  physician  to  the  Japanese 


Women  everywhere  pay  less  attention  to  the  laws  of  Health 
than  men.  They  have  less  exercise,  less  fresh  air  and  sunshine 
than  men.  Hence,  although  the  most  beautiful  women  are  more 
beautiful  than  the  handsomest  men,  yet  in  probably  every  country 
of  the  world  the  average  man  is  a  more  perfect  specimen  of 
masculine  than  the  average  woman  of  feminine  Beauty.  Concerning 
savages,  Mr.  Spencer  says :  "  Very  generally  among  the  lower 
races  the  females  are  even  more  unattractive  in  aspect  than  the 
males.  It  is  remarked  of  the  Puttooahs,  whose  men  are  diminutive 
and  whose  women  are  still  more  so,  that  'the  men  are  far  from 
being  handsome,  but  the  palm  of  ugliness  must  be  awarded  to  the 
women.'  The  latter  are  Jiard-worked  and  apparently  ill-fed" 
Again,  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Corea  GutzlarT  says  :  "  The  females 
are  very  ugly,  whilst  the  male  sex  is  one  of  the  best  formed  oi 
Asia.  .  .  .  Women  are  treated  like  beasts  of  burdeti."  Many 
similar  cases  are  cited  by  Dr.  Ploss  in  Das  Weil. 


FOUR  SOURCES  OF  BEAUTY  313 

Concerning  modern  civilised  nations  a  well-known  art-critic  has 
given  his  testimony  to  the  effect  that  "  Possibly  owing  to  the  fact 
that  men  are  freer  to  follow  their  normal  lives,  I  have  found  that 
in  a  majority  of  the  countries  I  have  visited  there  are  more  hand- 
some men  than  beautiful  women.  This  is  peculiarly  the  case  with 
the  modern  Greek,  and  was,  if  antique  sculpture  could  be  accepted 
as  witness,  with  the  ancient." 

Greek  Beauty. — In  the  preceding  chapters  of  this  work  an 
attempt  has  been  made  to  show  that  there  is  a  general  connection 
between  the  growth  of  Love  and  the  growth  of  Beauty  throughout 
the  world.  To  some  readers,  no  doubt,  the  thought  has  suggested 
itself,  "  How,  if  this  be  true,  did  the  loveless  Greeks  succeed  in 
reaching  such  uncommon  physical  beauty — beauty  which  artists  of 
all  times  have  admired?" 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  we  are  very  liable  to 
exaggerate  in  our  notions  of  Greek  Beauty,  because  we  are  apt  to 
generalise  from  the  fine  statues  that  have  come  down  to  us,  and 
to  imagine  that  they  represent  the  common  type  of  Greek  Beauty. 
But  it  is  well  known  that  the  Greeks  idealised  their  statues 
according  to  certain  physiognomic  rules ;  and,  moreover,  as 
Winckelmann  remarks,  "Beauty  was  not  a  general  quality  even 
among  the  Greeks,  and  Cotta  in  Cicero  says  that,  among  the  great 
numbers  of  young  persons  at  Athens,  there  were  only  a  few  possess- 
ing true  beauty." 

Besides,  it  has  not  been  claimed  that  Love  is  the  only  cause  of 
Beauty.  Taking  into  consideration  the  other  sources  of  Beauty,  it 
is  easy  enough  to  account  for  such  physical  attractiveness  as  the 
Greeks  did  possess.  The  intellectual  culture  which  the  men 
enjoyed  gave  them  a  great  advantage  over  the  women ;  and  equally 
important,  if  not  more  so,  was  the  attention  which  the  men  (and 
in  some  cases  the  women  too)  paid  to  Health.  Their  habitual  life 
in  the  open  air,  while  the  women  were  locked  up  at  home,  combined 
with  their  daily  gymnastic  exercises  in  making  their  complexion 
healthy,  their  eyes  sparkling,  their  limbs  supple,  vigorous,  and 
graceful. 

Other  causes  that  tended  to  keep  up  an  average  of  healthy 
bodily  development  were  the  refusal  to  bring  up  sickly  and  deformed 
infants,  and  the  existence  of  numerous  slaves,  who  did  all  the 
drudgery  for  the  Greeks. 

It  is  most  characteristic  that  the  author  of  a  very  old  Greek 
ode  formulates  his  wishes  in  this  order:  First,  health;  then, 
beauty;  thirdly,  wealth  honestly  got;  fourth,  the  privilege  of 
being  gay  and  merry  with  his  friends. 


314  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

First,  Health  ;  then,  Beauty.  There  lies  the  secret,  for  the} 
always  go  together;  and  in  aiming  at  one  the  Greeks  got  the 
other  too. 

There  was  every  reason  why  Greek  parents  should  have  striven 
eagerly  to  follow  those  laws  of  Health  which  ensure  beautiful 
children.  In  ancient  Greece  Beauty  was  a  possession  which  led 
to  national  fame.  Some  persons,  Winckelmann  informs  us,  were 
even  characterised  by  a  particular  name,  borrowed  from  some 
specially  fine  feature.  Thus  Demetrius  Poliorketes  was  named, 
from  the  beauty  of  his  eyelids,  xapirophtyapos,  i.e.  on  whose  lids 
the  graces  dwell. 

"It  appears,  indeed,"  the  same  writer  continues,  "to  have 
been  a  belief  that  the  procreation  of  beautiful  children  might  be 
promoted  by  the  distribution  of  prizes  for  beauty,  as  there  is  reason 
to  infer  from  the  contests  of  beauty  which  were  instituted  in  the 
remotest  ages  by  Cypselus,  King  of  Arcadia,  in  the  time  of  the 
Heraclidse,  on  the  banks  of  the  river  Alpheus,  in  Elis ;  and  also 
from  the  fact  that  at  the  festival  of  the  Philesian  Apollo,  a  prize 
for  the  most  exquisite  kiss  was  conferred  on  the  youthful.  Its 
assignment  was  subject  to  the  decision  of  a  judge,  as  was  probably 
also  the  case  at  Megara,  at  the  tomb  of  Diocles. 

"  At  Sparta,  and  at  Lesbos,  in  the  temple  of  Juno,  and  among 
the  citizens  of  Parrhasia,  the  women  contended  for  the  prize  of 
beauty.  The  regard  for  this  quality  was  so  strong  that,  as  Oppian 
declares,  the  Spartan  women  placed  in  their  sleeping-rooms  an 
Apollo,  or  Bacchus,  or  Nereus,  or  Narcissus,  or  Hyacinthus,  or 
Castor  and  Pollux,  in  order  that  they  might  bear  beautiful 
children." 

Some  hint  as  to  what  the  Greeks  regarded  as  beautiful  is  given 
by  the  epithets  Homer  bestows  on  Helen — "  the  well-rounded  " 
"  the  white-armed,"  "fair-haired,"  " of  the  beautiful  cheeks." 

Mediaeval  Ugliness. — This  is  a  topic  which  might  as  well  be 
introduced  under  any  of  the  other  Sources  of  Beauty,  for  it  is 
difficult  to  say  which  of  these  sources  was  most  completely  and 
deliberately  choked  up  during  the  Dark  Ages. 

It  is  a  curious  irony  of  language  that  makes  asceticism  almost 
identical  with  sestheticism,  of  which  it  is  the  deadly  enemy.  As 
diseases  are  transmitted  from  generation  to  generation,  so  it  seems 
that  the  fear  of  Beauty  born  of  mediaeval  asceticism  has  not  yet 
died  out  completely;  for  it  is  related  that  some  years  ago  a  pious 
dame  in  Boston  seriously  meditated  the  duty  of  having  some  of 
her  daughter's  sound  teeth  pulled  out,  so  as  to  mitigate  her  sinful 
Beauty. 


FOUR  SOURCES  OF  BEAUTY  315 

If  this  worthy  lady  had  followed  St.  Jerome's  injunction — "  I 
entirely  forbid  a  young  lady  to  bathe  "  ;  if  she  had  taught  her  that 
it  is  unladylike  to  have  a  healthy  appetite ;  if  she  had  locked  her 
up  in  a  house  rendered  pestilential  by  defective  drainage  ;  allowed 
her  mind  to  rot  in  fallow  idleness ;  taught  her  that  to  be  really 
saintly  and  virtuous  she  must  be  pale  and  hysterical ;  or  imitated 
the  lady  who  was  praised  by  a  bishop  in  the  fourth  century  for 
"  having  brought  upon  herself  a  swarm  of  diseases  which  defied  all 
medical  skill  to  cure," — if  the  worthy  Boston  lady  had  but  followed 
this  mediaeval  system,  she  would  have  succeeded  in  a  short  time 
in  overcoming  her  daughter's  sinful  Beauty,  and  making  her  "  ugly 
as  a  mud-fence,"  as  they  say  out  West. 

That  Personal  Beauty  cannot  flourish  where  Health  is  regarded 
as  a  vice  and  Disease  as  a  virtue  is  self-evident.  And  one  needs 
only  to  look  at  mediaeval  pictures  to  note  how  coarse  and  void 
of  refined  expression  are  the  men,  how  hard  and  masculine  the 
women.  The  faces  of  the  numerous  mediaeval  women  in  Planchd's 
Cyclopaedia  of  Costume  have  almost  all  an  expression  approaching 
imbecility,  and  features  as  if  they  had  been  chiselled  by  a  small 
boy  trying  his  hand  at  sculpture  for  the  first  time.  Thackeray 
does  not  hesitate  to  speak  even  of  "  those  simpering  Madonnas  of 
Rafael."  Mr.  G.  A.  Simcox  remarks  that  in  manuscripts  of  the 
twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  (like  the  Harleian  Gospels  and 
Maccabees)  we  meet  with  "short,  thickset  figures,  mostly  with 
the  long,  square,  horsey  face,  moving  stiffly  in  small  groups,  in 
heavy  dresses;  and  even  the  daughter  of  Herodias  dances  upon 
her  head  [sic]  in  a  gown  that  might  have  stood  alone.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  faces  are  more  set,  more  articulate,  less  flabby, 
though  they  are  all  mean,  or  almost  all,  and  look  askance  out  of 
the  corners  of  their  eyes"  (Art  Journal,  1874,  p.  58). 

There  may  be  Oriental  countries  where  woman  is  kept  more 
closely  under  lock  and  key  than  she  was  in  Europe  during  the 
Dark  Ages ;  but  nowhere  else  has  man  so  well  succeeded  in  reduc- 
ing the  pursuit  of  unhappiness  to  a  science,  in  snubbing,  scorning, 
abusing,  maltreating  woman.  How  all  this  must  have  tended  to 
increase  Personal  Beauty  is  well  brought  out  in  the  following 
advice  given  by  Mr.  Ruskin :  "  Do  not  think  you  can  make  a  girl 
lovely  if  you  do  not  make  her  happy.  There  is  not  one  restraint 
you  put  on  a  good  girl's  nature — there  is  not  one  check  you  give 
to  her  instincts  of  affection  or  of  effort — which  will  not  be  inde- 
libly written  on  her  features,  with  a  hardness  which  is  all  the 
more  painful  because  it  takes  away  the  brightness  from  the  eyes 
of  innocence,  and  the  charm  from  the  brow  of  virtue." 


316  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Modern  Hygiene. — Disease  is  Beauty's  deadliest  enemy.  Yet 
for  the  sake  of  gratifying  a  silly  vanity — for  the  sake  of  being 
distinguished  from  ordinary  mortals — a  certain  pallor  and  blase 
languor  have  long  been  considered  in  certain  influential  circles  as 
more  distingue  than  ruddy  cheeks  and  robust  health.  Yet  even 
if  pale  cheeks  were  more  beautiful  than  rosy  cheeks,  would  it  be 
worth  while  to  purchase  them  at  the  cost  of  premature  decay — of 
the  certainty  that  a  few  years  of  pale  cheeks  will  be  followed  by 
many  years  of  sallow  cheeks  and  lack-lustre  eyes,  deeply  sunk  into 
their  orbits  ? 

Though  beauty  is  still  of  lamentably  rare  occurrence  in  every 
country,  there  is  infinitely  more  of  it  than  during  the  Middle 
Ages ;  and  certainly  not  the  least  cause  of  this  is  the  increased 
attention  paid  to  Hygiene — public  and  personal.  The  difference 
in  this  respect  between  us  and  our  ancestors  is  well  brought  out 
by  the  statistics  regarding  the  average  length  of  life.  In  ancient 
Koine,  it  is  stated,  "  the  average  longevity  among  the  most  favoured 
classes  was  but  thirty  years,  whereas  to-day  the  average  longevity 
among  the  corresponding  class  of  people  is  fifty  years.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  the  average  longevity  in  Geneva  was  21*21 
years.  Between  1814  and  1833  it  was  40-68,  and  as  large  » 
proportion  now  live  to  seventy  as  lived  to  forty-three  three 
hundred  years  ago."  Dr.  Corfield,  comparing  the  statistics  of 
1842  with  those  of  1884,  states  that  the  mean  duration  of  life  in 
London  has  increased  from  twenty-nine  to  thirty-eight  years.  "  In 
the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth  the  death-rate  of  the  metropolis  as  it 
then  was  amounted  to  40  per  thousand.  In  the  reign  of  Queen 
Victoria,  almost  entirely  by  the  reduction  of  mortality  by  means 
of  improved  drainage,  ventilation,  and  water,  it  has  often  touched 
15  and  14,  and  even  fallen  as  low  as  13  in  the  thousand,"  while 
"in  many  of  the  suburban  districts,  and  in  the  fashionable  region 
about  Hyde  Park  it  ranges  from  11  to  12." 

In  France,  according  to  M.  Topinard,  the  mean  duration  of 
life,  which  was  twenty-nine  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  thirty-nine  from  1817  to  1831,  increased  to  forty  from  1840 
io  1859,  thanks  to  the  progress  of  sanitary  science  and  civilisation. 

As  Hygiene  is  receiving  more  and  more  attention  every  year,  it  is 
possible  that  in  course  of  time  Dr.  W.  B.  Richardson's  ideal  will 
be  realised — a  town  ideally  perfect  in  sanitary  matters,  having  a 
death-rate  of  9  per  1000,  and  105  years  the  duration  of  a  man's  life. 

As  decrepitude  and  premature  old  age  means  a  premature  losa 
of  Beauty,  personal  attractiveness  would  be  correspondingly  pro- 
longed and  increased  with  life  itself. 


FOUR  SOURCES  OF  BEAUTY  317 

Even  at  the  present  time  not  one  house  in  a  thousand  is  so 
constructed  that  every  room  has  good  ventilation.  Architects 
are,  however,  less  to  blame  than  the  people  who  will  persist  in 
their  absurd  old  superstition  that  draughts  and  night  air  are  inju- 
rious. Professor  Reclam,  the  distinguished  hygienist,  not  long 
ago  opened  a  crusade  against  the  horror  of  night  air  and  draughts 
which  is  especially  prevalent  among  his  countrymen.  "  Sleeping 
with  open  windows,"  he  says,  "is  most  unjustly  decried  among  the 
people,  as  well  as  night  air  in  general.  But  night  air  is  injurious 
only  in  swampy  regions,  whereas  on  dry  soil,  in  the  mountains,  and 
everywhere  in  the  upper  stories  of  a  house  it  is  more  salubrious 
than  day  air.  .  .  .  Draughts  are  not  injurious  unless  we  are  in  a 
glow.  To  healthy  persons  they  cannot  possibly  do  so  much  harm 
as  the  stagnant  air  in  a  close  room.  The  fear  of  draughts  is  en- 
tirely groundless,  though  it  affects  most  people  in  a  manner  which 
is  simply  ludicrous." 

Electricity,  no  doubt,  will  in  less  than  a  decade  abolish  horses 
from  our  cities,  and  with  them  the  dust,  foul  odours,  and  sleep- 
murdering  noise.  The  gain  to  Health,  and  through  it  to  Beauty, 
from  this  alone,  will  be  enormous.  Doubtless  one  of  the  reasons 
why  there  is  so  much  Beauty,  so  many  fresh  and  sparkling  eyes,  in 
Venice,  is  because  there  are  no  horses  in  that  city,  and  the  inhabi- 
tants are  not  roused  and  half-roused  from  sleep  every  fifteen  minutes 
during  the  night  by  a  waggon  rattling  down  the  street. 

It  is  not  sufficiently  known  that  street-noise  may  injure  the 
Health  even  of  those  whom  it  does  not  entirely  wake  up.  The 
restorative  value  of  sleep  lies  in  its  depth  and  the  absence  of  dreams. 
A  noisy  waggon  interferes  with  the  depth  of  sleep  and  starts  a 
current  of  dreams,  thus  depriving  it  of  half  its  potency. 

u Beauty  sleep"  is  an  expression  which  rests  on  a  real  physiological 
truth.  Sleep  before  midnight  really  is  more  health-giving  and 
beautifying  than  after  midnight,  for  the  reason  that  in  all  towns 
and  cities  there  is  less  noise  in  the  early  hours  of  the  night  than 
after  four  in  the  morning,  wherefore  sleep  is  deeper  between  ten 
and  twelve  than  between  six  and  eight  o'clock.  The  reason  why 
so  many  more  proposals  (by  city  folks)  are  made  in  the  country 
than  in  the  city  is  not  only  because  there  are  more  frequent  opportu- 
nities of  meeting  at  a  summer  hotel,  but  because  the  young  folks 
retire  early,  and  appear  in  the  morning  with  an  exuberance  of 
Health,  born  of  fresh  air  and  sound  sleep,  which  cannot  fail  to 
inspire  Love. 

Other  matters  of  Hygiene  will  be  discussed  in  connection  with 
the  organs  which  they  specially  concern. 


318  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 


n. — CROSSING 

Darwin  has  proved  experimentally  that  in  the  vegetable  kingdom 
"cross -fertilisation  is  generally  beneficial,  and  self- fertilisation 
injurious.  This  is  shown  by  the  difference  in  height,  weight,  con- 
stitutional vigour,  and  fertility  of  the  offspring  from  crossed  and 
self-fertilised  flowers,  and  in  the  number  of  seeds  produced  by  the 
parent  plants."  He  also  showed  that  "the  benefit  from  cross- 
fertilisation  depends  on  the  plants  which  are  crossed  having  been 
subjected  during  previous  generations  to  somewhat  different  con- 
ditions." 

Similarly,  concerning  animals,  we  read  in  Topinard,  that 
"breeders  who  select  their  subjects  with  a  definite  object  to  breed 
in  and  in,  that  is  to  say,  between  near  relations,  rapidly  obtain 
excellent  results.  They  know,  however,  that  fertility  then  dimin- 
ishes, and  that  it  will  cease  altogether  if  they  do  not  have  recourse 
from  time  to  time  to  crossing,  in  order  to  strengtJien  the  race" 

But  both  in  the  vegetable  and  the  animal  kingdom,  as  we  have 
seen,  superior  Health  also  implies  superior  Beauty. 

The  inference  is  natural  that  the  human  race  also  must  be 
benefited  by  marriages  of  individuals  of  different  races,  or  of  the 
same  race,  but  brought  up  under  different  conditions  of  life.  And 
the  facts  are  entirely  in  favour  of  this  supposition,  as  are  the  best 
authorities  in  Anthropology.  Dr.  Topinard  gives  the  following 
instances  among  many  others :  u  Immigration  into  the  United 
States,  which  has  taken  so  considerable  a  flight  during  the  last 
thirty  years,  has  already  been  enormous.  Every  variety  of  cross 
has  been  going  on  between  English,  Irish,  Germans,  Italians, 
French,  etc.,  with  the  greatest  possible  success.  We  may  also 
mention  numberless  Spaniards  from  the  Peninsula,  among  whom 
are  found  the  features  of  the  Saracen  invaders  of  the  ninth  cen- 
tury; then  that  population  on  the  Barbary  coast,  called  Moors, 
and  which  is  a  medley  of  races  of  eveiy  description,  the  Arab  and 
Berber  blood  predominating.  On  tracing  back  the  yellow  races, 
we  also  discover  a  perfect  eugenesis.  .  .  .  De  Mas  speaks  in  the 
highest  terms  of  mixed  breeds  of  Chinese  and  Mongolians,  and 
MM.  Mondieres  and  Morice  of  those  of  Chinese  and  Annamites 
under  the  name  of  Minuongs.  Dr.  Bowring  describes  a  race  in 
the  Philippine  Islands,  intermediate  between  the  Malays  and 
Chinese,  as  the  principal  agent  of  civilisation  in  these  latitudes." 

On  the  other  hand,  "  it  is  undeniable  that  in  Africa  the  Negro 
races  do  not  cross  to  any  great  extent."  Nor  has  any  one  ever 


FOUK  SOURCES  OF  BEAUTY  819 

accused  the  Negroes  of  an  excessive  amount  of  Beauty.  Whereas 
in  Lima,  which  has  the  finest  women  in  South  America,  "  there 
are  twenty -three  different  names  to  designate  the  varieties  of 
mixed  breeds  of  Spaniards,  Peruvians,  and  Negroes."  "  The  num- 
ber of  mongrels  on  the  face  of  the  globe  has  been  estimated  at 
twelve  millions,  of  whom  no  fewer  than  eleven  millions  are  in 
South  America."  South  American  women  are  already  famous  for 
their  Beauty,  and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  when  the  fusion 
of  all  these  elements  is  complete  the  race  will  be  one  of  the  finest 
in  the  world.  What  Beauty  it  has  now  seems  to  be  owing  chiefly 
to  the  magic  of  Crossing ;  for  attention  to  Health  there  is  little 
but  what  comes  from  life  in  the  open  air ;  while  Romantic  Love  is 
perhaps  as  rare  as  Mental  Refinement,  inasmuch  as  Courtship  is 
not  so  free  and  easy  a  matter  as  in  North  America,  All  the  more 
honour  to  the  potency  of  Crossing. 

Take  a  few  more  cases.  The  African  Negroes,  as  just  stated, 
do  not  mix  much,  and  are  an  ugly  type.  Among  the  Polynesians, 
on  the  other  hand,  there  are  many  very  fine  types  of  human 
beauty ;  and  it  is  therefore  not  surprising  to  read  that  to-day  in 
Polynesia,  "  mixed  breeds  are  so  numerous  that  it  would  be  difficult 
to  find  among  them  any  individuals  of  pure  race." 

Again,  concerning  the  Magyars  or  Hungarians,  Schweiger- 
Lerchenfeld  remarks  that  "  they  are  a  splendid  race,  physically 
and  intellectually.  .  .  .  The  girls  and  young  women  are  of  most 
piquant  charm,  models  of  health  in  mind  and  body."  But  these 
Magyars,  when  they  first  came  to  Europe,  were,  as  Waitz  states, 
"  of  a  repulsive  ugliness  in  the  eyes  of  all  their  neighbours."  That 
they  have  mixed  with  the  In  do-Germanic  type  is  shown  by  their 
appearance,  as  well  as  by  peculiarities  of  their  language.  "  Where 
they  have  probably  remained  less  mixed,"  Waitz  continues,  "  and 
at  the  same  time  less  cultivated,  in  some  remote  regions,  especially 
in  the  mountains,  the  ugly  primitive  type  may  be  found  to  the 
present  day ;  in  the  plains  may  be  found  every  transitional  form 
from  this  to  the  nobler  type ;  at  Szegedin  both  are  found  face  to 
face." 

The  Magyars,  in  turn,  have,  like  the  Slavo-Italians,  Czechs, 
etc.,  assisted  the  Austrians  in  evolving  a  superior  type  of  Beauty 
by  fusing  with  them.  That  there  is  very  much  more  Beauty  in 
Vienna  than  in  any  purely  German  city  is  an  almost  proverbial 
commonplace ;  and  the  reason  why  may  be  found  in  the  statistics  : 
in  Germany  31 '80  per  cent  are  blond,  14-05  brunet,  54*15  mixed; 
in  Austria  19-59  per  cent  are  blond,  23-17  brunet,  and  68'04 
mixed. 


ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

The  European  Turks  have  much  nobler  forms  of  the  head  and 
features  than  their  Asiatic  relatives ;  and  the  inference  seems  in- 
evitable that  they  owe  these  improvements  to  intermarriage  with 
Circassian  women. 

A  negative  instance,  showing  the  disadvantages  of  abstaining 
from  Crossing,  is  given  by  the  Jews.  There  are  handsome  Jews 
and,  up  to  a  certain  age,  very  beautiful  Jewesses.  But  the  typical 
Jew  is  certainly  not  a  thing  of  beauty.  The  disadvantages  of 
Jewish  separatism  are  shown  not  only  in  the  long,  thick,  crooked 
nose,  the  bloated  lips,  almost  suggesting  a  negro,  and  the  heavy 
lower  eyelid,  but  in  the  fact  that  the  Jews  "  have  proportionately 
more  insane,  deaf  mutes,  blind,  and  colour-blind"  than  other 
Europeans.  From  an  intellectual  and  industrial  point  of  view,  the 
Jews  are  one  of  the  finest  races  in  the  world,  and  their  absorption 
by  the  natives  of  the  countries  in  which  they  have  settled  could 
not  but  benefit  both  parties  concerned.  From  this  point  of  view 
there  may  be  something  said  even  in  favour  of  the  money-marriages, 
which  are  now  so  frequent  between  extravagant  German  officers 
and  Jewish  heiresses.  Unfortunately,  the  Jews  have  kept  apart 
so  long  from  the  rest  of  the  world  that  they  do  not  readily  mix' 
with  non-Jews.  Contrary  to  the  general  rule,  mixed  marriages  of 
Jews  and  Christians  are  less  fertile  than  pure  Jewish  unions. 

The  precise  manner  in  which  a  mixture  of  races  improves  phy- 
sical appearance  is  a  question  still  open  to  debate.  Professor 
Kollmann  (Plastische  Anatomic)  thinks  "  the  result  of  the  crossing 
of  two  forms  is  comparable,  not  to  a  chemical,  but  to  a  mechanical 
mixLu'-e  " ;  and  this  agrees  with  the  view  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer, 
who  endeavours  to  trace  to  this  fact  the  frequent  want  of  corres- 
pondence between  intellectual  and  physical  beauty.  He  believes, 
however,  the  time  will  come  "  when  the  present  causes  of  incon- 
gruity will  have  worked  themselves  out,"  and  intellectual  beauty 
emerge  in  harmony  with  physical,  in  all  details,  as  it  no  doubt 
exists  in  general. 

There  is  no  lack  of  facts  supporting  the  view  that  sexual  fusion 
is  a  mere  mechanical  mixture.  The  "  Bourbon  nose "  seems  to 
defy  mitigating  circumstances  for  generations ;  and  "  M.  de  Quatre- 
fages  knew  a  great-grandson  of  the  bailiff  of  Suffren  who  was 
a  striking  likeness  of  his  ancestor  after  four  generations,  and  who, 
nevertheless,  bore  no  resemblance  either  to  his  father  or  his  mother." 
A  child  may  resemble  its  father,  mother,  aunt,  uncle,  grand- 
parents, or  several  of  them  at  once ;  and  the  resemblance  may  vary 
at  different  ages. 

More  extraordinary  are  the  following  cases  cited  by  Topinard : 


FOUR  SOURCES  OF  BEAUTY  821 

"Sometimes  the  child  possesses  altogether  the  character  of  one 
or  other  parent  :  for  example,  the  child  of  a  European  father  and 
a  Chinese  mother,  Dr.  Scherzer  says,  is  altogether  a  European  or 
altogether  a  Chinese.  A  Berber  with  blue  eyes  and  with  the  lobule 
of  the  ear  absent,  married  to  a  dark  Arab  woman  with  a  well- 
formed  ear,  had  two  children,  one  like  himself,  the  other  like  his 
wife.  An  English  officer,  fair,  with  blue  eyes  and  florid  com- 
plexion, had  several  children  by  an  Indian  negress.  Some  were  the 
image  of  the  father,  others  exactly  like  the  mother.  ...  A 
decided  negro,  having  had  a  white  among  his  ancestors,  has  unex- 
pectedly a  child  with  a  white  skin  by  a  negress." 

Yet  all  these  are  exceptional  cases,  which,  like  the  winning 
number  in  a  lottery,  get  a  disproportionate  amount  of  attention. 
Moreover,  this  "  mechanical "  form  of  assimilation  seems  to  occur 
chiefly  where  very  unrelated  races  are  fused,  and  then  especially  in 
the  first  generation.  In  subsequent  generations  the  union  doubt- 
less tends  to  become  more  and  more  chemical — no  longer  a  negro 
character  floating  on  a  white  one,  like  oil  on  water,  but  a  mixture, 
as  of  wine  and  water. 

Take  the  American  quadroons,  for  instance,  famous  for  their 
beauty  of  form  and  features.  They  are  mongrels  of  the  third 
generation,  having  one-eighth  black,  seven-eighths  white  blood  in 
their  veins.  Surely  these  characters  are  not  "mechanically" 
mixed  in  such  a  woman,  but  "  chemically."  That  is,  you  do  not 
find  her  with  the  eyes  and  nose  of  a  negro,  the  lips  and  ears  of  a 
white,  one  part  of  her  skin  dark  the  other  light :  but  in  everything 
there  is  a  fusion  of  the  ancestral  elements.  Her  nose  is  not  flat 
like  that  of  her  ancestress,  nor  her  lips  swollen,  but  both  are 
intermediate  between  those  of  her  white  and  black  ancestors. 
Her  lip  is  still  thicker  than  that  of  the  whites,  and  that  gives  her 
a  sensuous  aspect,  kiss-inviting.  Her  eyes,  again,  have  lost  the 
fierce  glare  and  opaque  blackness  of  the  negro-grandmother,  and 
assumed  a  more  crystalline,  tender  lustre ;  while  their  form  and 
surroundings  have  become  more  refined  and  expressive.  All  this 
is  homogeneous  fusion,  not  "  heterogeneous  mixture." 

Finally,  it  is  hardly  correct  to  state  dogmatically  that  a  certain 
person  resembles  this  or  that  ancestor.  In  nothing  else  do  opinions 
vary  so  constantly  and  so  ludicrously.  No  one  who  has  ever  been 
"  trotted  around "  among  his  relatives  in  the  "  old  country,"  can 
have  failed  to  be  amused  at  the  countless  resemblances  to  this  and 
that  uncle,  aunt,  or  grand-parent  discovered  in  him,  until  he  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  he  must  be  a  veritable  epitome  of  the  whole 
genealogy.  A  man  who  at  home  is  supposed  to  be  absolutely  un- 


823  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUT* 

like  his  brother,  is  elsewhere  mistaken  for  him  and  addressed  as 
such  ;  while  another  man  finds  a  friend  who  knew  his  father  in 
his  youth,  and  declares  he  is  exactly  like  him ;  though  a  second 
friend  who  knew  only  the  mother,  claims  a  similar  hereditary 
influence  for  her.  All  of  which  tends  to  show  that  there  is  more 
of  both  parents  in  each  person  than  is  commonly  supposed  ;  and 
that  the  reason  why  opinions  differ  so,  is  because  the  fusion 
is  chemical  rather  than  mechanical,  which  makes  it  difficult  to  put 
the  finger  on  distinct  points  of  resemblance. 

It  is  in  the  more  closely  allied  races,  like  the  English  and  Ger- 
man, or  Italian  and  Spanish,  that  "chemical"  fusion  is  most 
readily  attained,  and  Beauty  most  rapidly  evolved.  Such  are  the 
unions  which  take  place  on  such  a  large  scale  in  the  United  States 
and  Canada ;  and  this  may  account  for  the  fact  that  there  is  more 
Beauty  in  North  America  than  in  South  America,  where  the  races 
that  intermingle  are  less  related.  There  is  a  golden  mean  here  as 
in  everything  eke. 

HL — EOMANTIO  LOVE 

What  Crossing  does  on  a  national  scale,  Love  continues  with 
individuals,  by  fusing  dissonant,  but  complementary,  parental 
qualities  into  a  harmonious  progeny.  How  this  is  done  is  sufficiently 
ihown  in  the  chapter  on  Schopenhauer. 

This,  however,  is  only  one  of  the  ways  in  which  Love  increases 
the  amount  of  Beauty  in  the  world.  There  are  several  others. 

The  second  is  that — apart  from  complementary  considerations — 
Romantic  Love  always  urges  the  choice  of  a  mate  who  approaches 
nearest  to  the  ideal  type  of  Beauty.  As  Beauty  is  hereditary,  and 
as  a  beautiful  father  and  mother  may  have  six  or  more  beautiful 
children,  this  predilection  for  Beauty  shown  by  Love  necessarily 
preserves  and  multiplies  it — 

"  From  fairest  creatures  we  desire  increase, 
That  thereby  Beauty's  rose  might  never  die," 

says  Shakspere,  anticipating  the  modern  theory  of  heredity. 

On  this  particular  topic  nothing  more  need  be  said  here,  because 
all  the  remainder  of  this  book  will  be  taken  up  with  a  considera- 
tion of  those  features  of  Personal  Beauty  for  which  the  aesthetic 
taste  which  forms  part  of  Romantic  Love  shows  a  decided  prefer- 
ence. 

The  third  way  in  which  Love  promotes  the  cause  of  Beauty  ia 
by  the  great  attention  it  pays  to  Health  in  its  choice.  For  though 


FOUB  SOUBUES  OF  BEAUTY  823 

Health  is  not  always  synonymous  with  Beauty,  it  is  the  soil  on 
which  alone  Beauty  can  germinate  and  flourish. 

The  fourth  way  is  through  the  elimination  of  ugliness.  Love, 
says  Plato,  is  devotion  to  Beauty :  '  with  the  ugly  Eros  has  no 
concern." 

From  the  aesthetic  point  of  view,  ugliness  is  disease.  Now 
there  is  a  cast-iron  Lykurgean  law  prevailing  throughout  Nature 
which  eliminates  the  diseased  and  the  ugly.  It  is  a  cruel  agency, 
called  Natural  Selection,  and  has  not  the  slightest  regard  for  indi- 
viduals, but  provides  only  for  the  weal  of  the  species,  as  Schopen- 
hauer erroneously  says  is  the  case  with  Love.  In  a  bed  of  plants, 
if  there  are  more  than  can  find  sustenance,  the  stronger  crowd  out 
the  weaker.  Among  animals,  wherever  there  is  competition,  the 
')est-developed,  handsomest  lion  survives  in  combat,  and  the  most 
fleet-footed,  and  consequently  most  graceful,  deer  escapes,  while  the 
clumsy,  the  ugly,  and  diseased  perish  miserably,  inexorably. 
Savages  leave  the  old  and  feeble  to  die,  and  weak  or  deformed 
children  are  either  deliberately  put  out  of  the  way  or  perish  from 
want  of  proper  care.  Nor  among  the  ancient  civilised  nations  were 
such  methods  unknown.  Plato  and  Aristotle,  says  Mr.  Grote, 
agree  in  this  point :  "  Both  of  them  command,  that  no  child  born 
crippled  or  deformed  shall  be  brought  up — 9  practice  actually 
adopted  at  Sparta  under  the  Lykurgean  inr  fruitions,  and  even 
carried  further,  since  no  child  was  allowed  tr>  be  brought  up  until 
it  had  been  inspected  and  approved  by  th/s  public  nurses."  The 
Romans,  too,  were  legally  permitted  to  expose  deformed  children. 

Christianity,  the  religion  of  pity  aad  charity,  abhors  such 
practices.  Christianity  is  antagonistic  to  Natural  Selection.  One 
of  its  chief  functions  is  the  building  of  hospitals  in  which  the 
cripples,  the  insane,  the  incurably  diseased,  are  gratuitously  and 
tenderly  cared  for,  instead  of  being  allowed  to  perish,  as  they 
would  under  the  sway  of  Natural  Selection. 

This  artificial  preservation  of  disease  and  deformity,  in  and  out 
of  hospitals,  due  to  Christian  chanty,  might  in  the  long  run  prove 
injurious  to  the  welfare  of  the  human  race,  were  it  not  for  the 
stepping  in  of  Modern  Love  as  a  preserver  of  Health  and  Beauty. 
What  formerly  was  left  to  the  agency  of  Natural  Selection  is  now 
done  by  Love,  through  Sexual  Selection,  on  a  vast  scale. 

From  a  moral  point  of  view,  the  substitution  of  Sexual  for 
Natural  Selection  is  a  great  gain,  in  harmony  with  the  spirit  of 
Christianity.  For  Cupid  does  not  kill  those  who  do  not  come  up 
to  his  standard  of  Health  and  Beauty,  but  simply  ignores  and 
Condemns  them  to  a  life  of  single-blessedness. 


124  BOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 


IV. — MENTAL  REFINEMENT 

"After  all,"  says  Washington  Irving,  speaking  of  Spanish 
women,  "  it  is  the  divinity  within  which  makes  the  divinity  with- 
out ;  and  I  have  been  more  fascinated  by  a  woman  of  talent  and 
intelligence,  though  deficient  in  personal  charms,  than  I  have  been 
by  the  most  regular  beauty." 

It  is  one  of  the  commonest  commonplaces  of  conversation  that 
in  moments  of  intellectual  or  emotional  excitement  the  features  of 
plain  people  assume  an  aspect  of  exquisite  beauty.  Love  trans- 
fuses a  homely  girl's  countenance  with  a  glow  of  angelic  loveliness ; 
and  biographies  are  full  of  statements  concerning  the  countenances 
of  men  of  genius,  which,  ordinarily  unattractive,  assumed  an  ex- 
pression of  unearthly  beauty  while  their  minds  were  active  and 
electrified  the  facial  muscles. 

"  There  is  not  any  virtue  the  exercise  of  which,  even  momen- 
tarily, will  not  impress  a  new  fairness  upon  the  features,"  says  Mr. 
Ruskin ;  and  again,  he  speaks  of  "  the  operation  of  the  intellectual 
powers  upon  the  features,  in  the  fine  cutting  and  chiselling  of 
them,  and  removal  from  them  of  signs  of  sensuality  and  sloth,  by 
which  they  are  blunted  and  deadened,  and  substitution  of  energy 
and  intensity  for  vacancy  and  insipidity  (by  which  wants  alone  the 
faces  of  many  fair  women  are  utterly  spoiled  and  rendered  value- 
less) ;  and  by  the  keenness  given  to  the  eye  and  fine  moulding  and 
development  to  the  brow,  of  which  effects  Sir  Charles  Bell  has  well 
noted  the  desirableness  and  opposition  to  brutal  types." 

An  English  clergyman,  the  Rev.  F.  P.  Lawson,  diocesan  inspector 
for  Northamptonshire,  issued  a  report  not  long  ago  concerning  the 
results  of  his  observations  in  325  urban  and  rural  schools  during 
several  years,  regarding  the  effects  of  good  education  in  improving 
the  appearance  of  the  children.  "A  school,  thoroughly  well 
taught,  seldom  failed  to  exhibit  a  considerable  number  of  interest- 
ing little  faces,  and  a  striking  absence  of  such  faces  might  invari- 
ably be  associated  with  poverty  of  tone  and  superficial  instruction. 
Nothing  struck  him  more  forcibly  in  a  school  that  has  been 
suddenly  lifted  out  of  the  mire  by  a  firstrate  teacher  than  the 
bright  and  thoughtful  look  which  the  children  soon  acquire." 

Negative  evidence  to  the  same  effect  might  also  be  cited  by  the 
volume,  but  one  case  may  suffice.  *'  It  is  unhappily  a  fact,"  says 
Mr.  Galton,  "  that  fairly  distinct  types  of  criminals  breeding  true 
to  their  "kind  have  become  established,  and  are  one  of  the  saddest 
disfigurements  of  modern  civilisation," 


FOUR  SOURCES  OF  BEAUTY  825 

The  connection  between  culture  and  a  superior  type  of  Beauty 
is  strikingly  revealed  in  the  following  remarks  on  the  far-fained 
Georgian  women  of  the  Caucasus,  made  by  a  great  connoisseur  of 
feminine  beauty,  the  poet  Boclenstedt :  "  In  Europe  the  notion 
prevails  that  a  Georgian  woman  is  a  tall,  graceful  being,  of  luscious 
form,  clothed  in  wide,  rich  garments,  with  dense  black  hair,  long 
enough  to  enchain  all  masculine  hearts,  an  open,  noble  forehead, 
and  a  pair  of  eyes  which  contain  within  their  dark,  mysterious, 
magic  circle  all  the  secrets  of  human  delight  that  come  through 
the  soul  or  the  senses.  Her  gait  is  rapture.  Joy  precedes,  and 
admiration  follows  her.  .  .  .  With  such  notions  in  their  heads, 
strangers  generally  arrive  in  Georgia,  and  find  themselves  wofully 
disappointed.  The  tourists  who  come  with  such  great  expectations 
to  visit  this  country,  invested  with  the  atmosphere  of  a  fairyland 
by  history  and  legend,  either  adhere  stubbornly  to  their  precon- 
ceived notions,  or  else  they  instantly  go  over  to  the  opposite 
extreme,  and  find  everything  dirty,  ugly,  disgusting,  dreadful. 

"  The  truth  lies  between  these  extremes.  The  Georgians  are, 
all  in  all,  one  of  the  handsomest  nations  on  the  earth.  But 
although  I  am  a  great  admirer  of  women,  I  am  compelled  in  this 
case  to  award  the  prize  to  the  men  instead  of  the  women.  This 
opinion  is  endorsed  by  all  educated  inhabitants  of  Georgia  who 
have  eyes,  taste,  and  an  impartial  judgment. 

"I  must  add  that  of  that  higher  beauty  where  heart  and 
intellect  and  soul  are  mirrored  in  the  eye,  I  found  few  traces  in 
the  whole  Caucasus,  either  among  men  or  women.  I  have  seen 
the  greater  number  of  the  beauties  which  Georgia  boasts,  but  not 
one  face  have  I  seen  that  satisfied  me  completely,  though  the 
picturesque  native  costume  does  much  to  heighten  the  charms  of 
the  women.  The  face  entirely  lacks  that  refined  mental  expression 
which  makes  a  beautiful  European  woman  such  a  unique  enchant- 
ress. Such  a  woman  may  still  inspire  love  and  win  hearts  long 
after  the  time  of  her  bloom;  whereas  in  a  Georgian  everything 
fades  with  youth.  The  eyes,  which,  notwithstanding  their  apparent 
fire,  never  expressed  anything  but  calm  and  voluptuous  indolence, 
lose  their  lustre;  the  nose,  which  even  in  its  normal  relations 
exceeds  the  limits  of  beauty,  assumes,  in  consequence  of  the 
premature  hollowness  of  the  cheeks,  such  abnormal  dimensions 
that  many  people  imagine  that  it  actually  continues  to  grow ;  and 
the  bosom,  which  the  national  costume  makes  no  effort  to  conceal, 
prematurely  loses  its  natural  firmness — all  of  which  phenomena 
are  observed  in  European  women  much  less  frequently,  and  in  a 
less  exaggerated  form.  If  you  add  to  this  the  habit,  so  prevalent 


326  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

among  Georgians,  young  and  old,  of  using  white  and  red  cosmetics, 
you  will  understand  that  such  rude  and  inarti-tic  arts  of  the  toilet 
can  only  add  to  the  observer's  sense  of  dissatisfaction." 

America  affords  many  illustrations  of  the  manner  in  which 
refinement  of  mind  and  manners  increases  Beauty  in  a  single 
generation.  There  are  in  every  city  thousands  of  parents  who 
began  life  as  ordinary  labourers,  but  soon  got  rich  through  industry 
or  good  luck.  They  bring  up  their  children  in  houses  where  every 
attention  is  paid  to  sanitary  rules ;  they  send  them  to  school  and 
college ;  and  when  they  come  back  you  would  hardly  believe  that 
those  coarse-featured,  clumsy-limbed,  ungraceful  persons  could  be 
their  father  and  mother.  The  discrepancy  is  sometimes  so  great 
that  when  the  young  folks  invite  people  of  "  their  set "  to  their 
house,  the  old  birds  keep  out  of  the  way  discreetly,  either  of  their 
own  accord  or  by  filial  dictation,  which  in  .America  appears  to  be 
displacing  parental  authority. 

But  if  there  is  such  an  intimate  connection  between  culture  and 
Beauty,  how  is  it  that  we  so  often  find  plain  features  joined  with 
a  noble  mind  and  fine  features  with  a  mean  mind  ?  Mr.  Spencer 
has  endeavoured  to  explain  this  apparent  discrepancy  by  assuming 
that  in  such  cases  plain  features  are  inherited  severally  and  separ- 
ately from  ancestors  of  diverse  physiognomies,  which  being  merely 
mechanically  mixed,  not  fused,  fail  to  harmonise.  There  may  be 
something  in  this,  but  a  simpler  explanation  is  at  hand. 

Noble  minds  are  often  the  result  of  individual  effort,  and 
persistence  in  it.  Many  men  of  genius  have  had  humble  parents 
not  specially  gifted.  From  these  parents  and  their  ancestors  they 
inherited  their  plain  faces.  Now  individual  effort,  in  the  short 
period  of  a  lifetime,  is  insufficient  to  alter  the  proportions  of  a 
face,  which  depend  on  its  bony  parts ;  but  it  does  suffice  to  alter 
the  expression,  which  depends  on  the  movements  of  the  soft, 
muscular  parts.  Hence  every  person,  however  plain-featured, 
may  acquire  a  beautiful  expression  by  cultivating  his  mind  and 
refining  his  manners  and  temper.  Whenever,  therefore,  we  meet 
a  man  or  woman  whose  features  are  less  attractive  at  rest  than 
when  moved  to  expression  of  emotion,  we  may  feel  sure  that  they 
owe  their  mental  refinement  more  to  individual  effort  than  to 
inherited  capacity. 

The  children  of  such  persons  will  be  more  beautiful  than  they 
are  themselves,  because  they  will  inherit  the  parents'  habit  of 
expressive  muscular  action  of  the  features.  And  owing  to  the 
fact  that  all  the  bony  parts  of  the  body  are  modified  in  accordance 
with  the  action  of  the  muscles  attached  to  them,  the  bony  parts, 


EVOLUTION  OF  TASTE  327 

the  proportions,  of  the  face  will  also  be  gradually  modified  and 
moulded  into  nobler  shapes,  through  the  continuance  of  refined 
emotional  expression. 

It  is  in  this  manner  that  intellectual  growth  and  emotional 
refinement  have  gradually  differentiated  our  features  from  those  of 
our  savage  ancestors.  Our  lips  have  become  more  delicate,  our 
mouths  smaller,  our  jaws  less  gigantic,  ponderous,  and  projecting, 
because  civilisation  has  taught  us  to  use  the  hands  in  preparing 
food,  and  to  cut  it  instead  of  tearing  it  off  the  bone  with  the 
teeth,  as  savages  and  other  wild  animals  do. 

Use  increases,  disuse  diminishes  the  size  of  an  organ.  Hence 
for  the  same  reason  that  our  jaws  have  become  less  projecting  and 
heavy,  our  forehead  has  lost  its  backward  slope  and  become 
straight  and  noble,  owing  to  the  growth  of  the  brain.  And 
similarly  with  other  peculiarities  of  the  face,  indicating  the  con- 
nection between  mental  refinement  and  physical  beauty.  "  Thus 
is  it,"  says  Mr.  Spencer,  "  with  depression  of  the  biidge  of  the 
nose,  which  is  a  characteristic  both  of  barbarians  and  of  our 
babes,  possessed  by  them  in  common  with  our  higher  quadrumana. 
Thus,  also,  is  it  with  that  forward  opening  of  the  nostrils,  which 
renders  them  conspicuous  in  a  front  view  of  the  face, — a  trait 
alike  of  infants,  savages,  and  apes.  And  the  same  may  be  said 
of  widespread  alse  to  the  nose,  of  great  width  between  the  eyes,  of 
long  mouth,  of  large  mouth — indeed  of  all  those  leading  peculiari- 
ties of  feature  which  are  by  general  consent  called  ugly." 


EVOLUTION  OF  TASTE 

SAVAGE  NOTIONS  OF  BEAUTY 

In  all  the  preceding  remarks  concerning  the  connection  between 
mental  and  physical  beauty,  the  assumption  has  been  made  tacitly 
that  what  we  consider  beautiful  is  so  in  reality;  and  that  our 
taste  is  a  safe  guide  to  follow.  Yet  this  assumption  may  be 
challenged,  and  has,  indeed,  been  often  challenged.  Every  nation, 
every  savage  tribe,  has  its  own  standard  of  Beauty  ;  what  right, 
therefore,  have  we  to  claim  dogmatically  that  we  are  infallible 
judges  1 

Ask  the  devil,  says  Voltaire,  what  is  the  meaning  of  TO 
icaAov — the  Beautiful — and  he  will  tell  you  "Le  beau  est  une 
paire  de  comes,  quatre  griffes,  et  une  queue  " — a  couple  of  horns, 
four  claws,  and  a  tail  Ask  a  North  American  Indian,  save 


328  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Hearne,  what  is  Beauty,  he  will  answer :  "  A  broad,  flat  face, 
small  eyes,  high  cheek-bones,  three  or  four  broad  black  lines 
across  each  cheek,  a  low  forehead,  a  large,  broad  chin,  a  clumsy 
hook-nose,  a  tawny  hide,  and  breasts  hanging  down  to  the  belt." 
In  the  Chinese  empire  "  those  women  are  preferred  who  have  .  .  . 
a  broad  face,  high  cheek-bones,  very  broad  noses,  and  enormous 
ears."  "  One  of  the  titles  of  the  Zulu  king,"  says  Darwin  (who 
gives  many  other  instances  Apropos  in  chapter  xix.  of  the  Descent  of 
Man),  "  is  *  You  who  are  black.'  Mr.  Galton,  in  speaking  to  me 
about  the  natives  of  South  Africa,  remarked  that  their  ideas  of 
beauty  seem  very  different  from  ours ;  for  in  one  tribe  two  slim, 
slight,  and  pretty  girls  were  not  admired  by  the  natives." 

Darwin  himself  appears  to  have  been  staggered  and  puzzled  by 
this  diversity  of  taste,  and  to  have  partly  inclined  to  the  theory 
that  Beauty  is  relative  to  the  human  mind  (though  elsewhere  he 
repudiates  it) — a  theory  which  Jeffrey  has  so  boldly  formulated  in 
the  assertion  that  "  All  tastes  are  equally  just  and  true,  in  as  far 
as  concerns  the  individual  whose  taste  is  in  question ;  and  what  a 
man  feels  distinctly  to  be  beautiful  is  beautiful  to  him,  whatever 
other  people  may  think  of  it." 

Fiddlesticks  !  The  Alison-Jeffrey  school  of  Scotch  sestheticians, 
having  been  among  the  first  in  the  field,  have  done  more  to 
confuse  the  English  mind  on  the  subject  of  Beauty  than  several 
generations  of  other  clever  writers  will  be  able  to  clear  up  again. 

There  are  about  half  a  dozen  sound,  square,  solid,  scientific 
reasons  why  we  have  a  better  right  to  our  opinion  concerning  the 
nature  of  Beauty  than  a  Hottentot  or  a  North  American  Indian. 

NON-ESTHETIC   ORNAMENTATION 

One  of  the  things  most  commonly  forgotten  by  those  who 
wonder  at  the  strange  "  taste  "  of  savages  is  that  many  of  their 
customs  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  sense  of  beauty. 
The  habit  of  putting  on  "  war-paint "  originated  not  in  a  desire 
for  ornamentation,  but  in  the  wish  to  make  themselves  frightful 
in  appearance  to  the  enemy.  For  the  same  reason  heads  are 
mutilated.  As  Waltz  notes  in  speaking  of  Tahiti :  "  A  very  ugly 
mutilation  is  that  to  which  most  of  the  boys  had  to  subject  them- 
selves. Immediately  after  birth  their  mothers  compressed  their 
forehead  and  the  back  of  the  head,  so  that  the  former  became 
narrow  and  high,  the  latter  fiat ;  this  was  done  to  make  their 
aspect  more  terrible,  and  thus  turn  them  into  more  formidable 
warriors."  Tattooing,  likewise,  was  originally  intended  to  be  an 


EVOLUTION  OF  TASTE  329 

easy  sign  of  recognition,  or  of  social  or  religious  distinction,  rather 
than  an  ornament  of  the  body.  And  when  we  consider  how  prone 
the  mind  of  our  own  fashionable  ladies  is  to  violate  every  canon 
of  good  taste  in  their  wild  effort  to  surpass  one  another  in  some 
novel  extravagance  just  from  Paris ;  when  we  note  that  if  a  Fifth 
Avenue  lady  wears  a  gull  on  her  hat,  her  coloured  cook  will  invest 
in  a  turkey  or  ostrich  for  hers,  we  understand  at  once  that  many 
of  the  mutilations  approved  by  savages  are  the  outcome  of  vanity 
and  emulation,  not  of  aesthetic  taste. 

PERSONAL  BEAUTY   AS   A   FINE   AUT 

Yet  there  are  undoubtedly  a  number  of  physiognomic  and  other 
peculiarities  which  savages  admire  while  we  consider  them  ugly ; 
and  some,  again,  which  we  admire  and  they  dislike.  Have  we  a 
right  to  consider  them  inferior  to  us  in  taste  because  they  fail  to 
admire  what  we  adore  ? 

Certainly ;  beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt.  It  takes  genius  to 
fully  appreciate  genius ;  it  takes  a  refined  taste  to  appreciate 
refined  beauty.  This  is  what  the  savage  lacks. 

Look  at  any  one  of  the  fine  arts.  Why  does  the  savage  prefer 
his  monotonous  drumming  and  ear-piercing  war-songs  to  a  soft, 
beautiful,  dreamy  Chopin  nocturne?  Because  he  cannot  under' 
stand  the  nocturne. 

Why  does  he  prefer  his  painted,  clumsy,  coarse-featured  squaw 
to  a  civilised  woman  with  delicate  contours,  refined  features, 
graceful  gait  ?  Because  he  does  not  understand  the  beauty  of  the 
latter.  It  is  too  subtle  for  his  coarse  nerves,  his  feeble  imagina- 
tion. The  smiles  and  manifold  expressions  that  chase  one  another 
across  her  lovely  features,  like  the  subtly-interwoven  melodies  in 
a  symphonic  poem,  are  the  visible  signs  of  thoughts  and  emotions 
which  he  has  never  experienced,  and  therefore  caimot  understand. 
It  is  like  giving  him  a  page  of  Sanskrit  to  read. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  a  negro  never  falls  in  love  with  a 
white  woman,  and  that  a  peasant  prefers  his  plump,  crude 
country-girl  to  the  fair,  delicate  city  visitor.  He  requires  more 
vigorous  arms,  broader  features,  than  the  city  girl  possesses,  to 
make  an  impression  on  his  callous  nerves  of  touch  and  sight. 
And  it  is  fortunate  for  the  peasant  girl  that  her  lover  does  lack 
taste,  else  she  would  soon  find  him  a  fickle  deserter. 

The  savage,  in  a  word,  prefers  his  style  of  "beauty"  to  ours  for 
the  same  reason  that  he  prefers  a  piece  of  raw  liver  and  a  glass  of 
oil  to  the  subtle  flavours  of  French  cookery  and  French  wines. 


880  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

His  senses  are  too  coarse,  his  mind  too  vulgar,  to  perceive 
the  poetry  of  refined  features.  Everything  must  be  loud  and 
exaggerated  to  make  an  impression  on  him — loud  music,  loud 
and  glaring  red  and  yellow  colours,  loud  and  coarse  features. 

This  doctrine  that  differences  of  taste  are  merely  due  to  dif- 
ferences in  the  degree  of  aesthetic  culture,  and  that  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  an  absolute  standard  of  human  beauty,  derives  further 
support  from  the  facts  (1)  that  the  ideal  of  beauty  set  up  by  the 
aesthetic  Greeks  two  thousand  years  ago  corresponds  so  remarkably 
with  that  of  modern  artistic  minds;  (2)  that  e.g.  a  Japanese 
student  in  the  United  States  soon  learns  to  prefer  American  female 
beauty  to  the  Japanese  variety ;  (3)  that  an  English,  Italian,  or 
American  audience  who  at  first  admire  Norrna  and  find  Lohengrin 
tiresome,  can  in  a  few  seasons  be  so  educated  as  to  prefer 
Lohengrin  and  actually  scorn  Norma ;  but  not  vice  versa,  in  either 
case  (2)  or  (3). 

Mr.  Ruskin  takes  a  similar  view  regarding  differences  of  taste 
when  he  says  that  "  respecting  what  has  been  asserted  of  negro 
nations  looking  with  disgust  on  the  white  face,  no  importance  what- 
ever is  to  be  attached  to  the  opinions  of  races  who  have  never 
received  any  ideas  of  beauty  whatsoever  (these  ideas  being  only 
received  by  minds  under  some  certain  degree  of  cultivation),  and 
whose  disgust  arises  naturally  from  what  they  suppose  to  be  a  sign 
of  weakness  or  ill-health." 

That  this  consideration  of  health  does  affect  the  negro's  judg- 
ment regarding  the  beauty  of  the  white  complexion,  is  also  shown 
by  what  Mr.  Winwood  Reade  told  Mr.  Darwin,  namely,  that  the 
negro's  "  horror  of  whiteness  may  be  attributed  .  .  .  partly  to  the 
belief  held  by  most  negroes  that  demons  and  spirits  are  white,  and 
partly  to  their  thinking  it  a  sign  of  ill-health." 

But  of  all  the  theoretical  truths  emphasised  in  the  Modern 
Painters  none  is  so  important  as  this  :  "  That  not  only  changes  of 
opinion  take  place  in  consequence  of  experience,  but  that  those 
changes  are  from  variation  of  opinion  to  unity  of  opinion, — that 
whatever  may  be  the  difference  of  estimate  among  unpractised  or 
uncultivated  tastes,  there  will  be  unity  of  taste  among  the 
experienced ;  and  that,  therefore,  the  result  of  repeated  trial  and 
experience  is  to  arrive  at  principles  of  preference  in  some  sort  com- 
mon to  all,  and  which  are  part  of  our  nature." 

Let  us  now  see  what  are  those  principles  of  Beauty  that  may 
be  considered  independent  of  a  more  or  less  crude  and  undeveloped 
taste.  Some  are  negative,  some  positive. 


NEGATIVE  TESTS  OJ?  BEAUTY  B81 


NEGATIVE  TESTS  OP  BEAUTY 

(a)  Animals. — "  It  has  been  argued,"  says  Darwin  (by  Schaff- 
hausen),  "  that  ugliness  consists  in  an  approach  to  the  structure  of 
the  lower  animals,  and  no  doubt  this  is  partly  true  with  the  more 
civilised  nations,  in  which  intellect  is  highly  appreciated;  but 
this  explanation  will  hardly  apply  to  all  forms  of  ugliness." 

Curiously  enough,  savages  themselves  use  animals  as  a  negative 
test  of  beauty.  Thus  we  read  that  "the  Indians  of  Paraguay 
eradicate  their  eyebrows  and  eyelashes,  saying  that  they  do  not 
wish  to  be  like  horses."  "  On  the  Eastern  coast,  the  negro  boys, 
when  they  saw  Burton,  cried  out,  'Look  at  the  white  man;  does 
he  not  look  like  a  white  ape  V"  "A  man  of  Cochin  China  *  spoke 
with  contempt  of  the  wife  of  the  English  ambassador — that  she 
had  white  teeth  like  a  dog,  and  a  rosy  colour  like  that  of  potato- 
flowers.'  " 

A  few  centuries  ago  it  was  a  favourite  pastime  of  physiognomists 
to  draw  elaborate  parallels  between  men  and  animals. .  Thus,  in 
1593,  there  appeared  a  work,  De  Humana  Physiognomia,  with 
numerous  illustrations,  in  which  always  a  human  face  was  matched 
with  some  animal's  head.  Professor  Wundt  thus  sums  up  the 
essence  of  this  book :  "  A  broad  forehead,  we  are  told,  indicates 
fearfulness,  because  the  ox  with  his  broad  head  lacks  courage.  A 
long  forehead,  on  the  other  hand,  indicates  erudition,  as  is  shown 
by  means  of  an  intelligent  dog  who  has  the  honour  of  serving  as  a 
pendant  to  Plato's  profile.  Persons  with  shaggy  hair  are  good- 
natured,  as  they  resemble  the  lion.  He  whose  eyebrows  are 
turned  inwards,  towards  the  nose,  is  uncleanly  like  the  pig,  which 
this  resembles.  The  narrow  chin  of  the  ape  signifies  malice  and 
envy.  Long  ears  and  thick  lips,  such  as  the  donkey  possesses,  are 
signs  of  stupidity.  A  person  who  has  a  nose  crooked  from  the 
forehead  inclines,  like  the  raven,  to  theft,  etc.  These  animal- 
physiognomists  appear  to  have  favoured  a  thoroughly  pessimistic 
view  of  man's  capacities,  inasmuch  as  for  every  creditable  resem- 
blance they  find  at  least  ten  discreditable  ones." 

Apart  from  these  puerilities,  it  is  in  most  cases  simply  absurd 
to  compare  man  with  animals.  Except  in  the  case  of  apes  there 
are  no  proper  terms  of  comparison,  because  the  types  are  so  distinct ; 
and,  moreover,  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  own  type,  the  average 
animal  of  any  species  is  more  beautiful  tnan  the  average  man  or 
woman  from  the  human  point  of  view.  This  assertion  is  indirectly 
corroborated  by  Mr.  Gallon's  testimony,  that  "  our  human  civilised 


382  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

stock  is  far  more  weakly  through  congenital  imperfection  than  that 
of  any  other  species  of  animals,  whether  wild  or  domestic." 

Schopenhauer  considered  animals  beautiful  in  every  way,  and 
suggested  that  whenever  we  do  find  an  animal  ugly  it  is  due  to 
some  irrelevant,  inevitable  association  of  ideas,  as  when  a  monkey 
suggests  a  man,  or  a  toad  mud.  And  Mr.  Ruskin  pertinently 
suggests  that  "  That  mind  only  is  fully  disciplined  in  its  theoretic 
power  which,  when  it  chooses,  throwing  off  the  sympathies  and 
repugnancies  with  which  the  ideas  of  destructiveness  or  of  inno- 
cence accustom  us  to  regard  the  animal  tribes,  as  well  as  those 
meaner  likes  and  dislikes  which  arise,  I  think,  from  the  greater  or 
less  resemblance  of  animal  powers  to  our  own,  can  pursue  the 
pleasures  of  typical  beauty  down  to  the  scales  of  the  alligator,  the 
coils  of  the  serpent,  and  the  joints  of  the  beetle." 

When  Sir  Charles  Bell  intimated  that  in  Greek  sculpture  the 
guiding  principle  was  remoteness  from  the  animal  type,  he  stated 
only  one  side  of  the  truth,  of  which  the  other  is  thus  noted  by 
Winckelmann  :  among  the  Greeks,  he  says,  "  The  study  of  artists 
in  producing  ideal  beauties  was  directed  to  the  nature  of  the  nobler 
beasts,  so  that  they  not  only  instituted  comparisons  between  the 
forms  of  the  human  countenance  and  the  shape  of  the  head  of 
certain  animals,  but  they  even  undertook  to  adopt  from  animals 
the  means  of  imparting  greater  majesty  and  elevation  to  their 
statues  .  .  .  especially  in  the  heads  of  Hercules."  Jupiter's  head 
"  has  the  complete  aspect  of  the  lion,  the  king  of  beasts,  not  only 
in  the  large,  round  eyes,  in  the  fulness  of  the  prominent,  and,  as  it 
were,  swollen  forehead,  and  in  the  nose,  but  also  in  the  hair,  which 
hangs  from  his  head  like  the  mane  of  the  lion,  first  rising  upward 
from  the  forehead,  and  then,  parting  on  each  side  into  a  bow,  again 
falling  downward." 

So  that  we  may  safely  reject  the  theory  that  ugliness  consists 
in  an  approach  to  the  structure  of  the  lower  animals,  whatever 
savages  and  Chinamen  may  think  on  this  subject.  Coarse  minds 
little  suspect  what  exquisite  beauty  is  to  be  found  in  the  head  of  a 
cow  or  a  donkey,  a  puppy  or  a  lamb — beauty  which,  like  a  lovely 
melody,  may  bring  tears  to  the  eyes  of  one  who  is  sensitive  to 
aesthetic  impressions.  Objectively  considered,  even-  the  destructive 
emotions  do  not  appear  ugly  in  an  animal.  The  ferocity  of  a  lion 
does  not  make  him  appear  vicious,  because  ferocity  is  his  nature. 
He  knows  no  better;  can  only  live  by  fighting.  But  a  man  is 
disfigured  by  ferocity  because  he  does  know  better ;  he  can  live 
without  fighting ;  and  it  is  the  consciousness  of  Ms  selfish  meanneu 
that  puts  the  stamp  of  ugliness  on  his  distorted  features. 


NEGATIVE  TESTS  OF  BEAUTY  333 

In  apes  alone  does  fierceness  seem  ugly  and  brutal  instead  of 
sublime.  For  apes  bear  so  much  resemblance  to  us,  and  have  a 
brain  so  superior  in  structure  to  that  of  other  animals,  that  we  feel 
justified  in  applying  the  human  standard.  Hence  apes  alone  afford 
us  a  negative  test  of  beauty.  Their  heads  and  faces  are  cast  in 
our  mould,  and  therefore  afford  the  means  of  direct  comparison. 
In  looking  at  their  massive,  brutal  jaws,  their  receding  foreheads, 
their  uudifferentiated  hands  and  feet,  their  coarse,  hairy  skin,  their 
clumsy,  inexpressive,  gigantic  mouths,  their  flat  noses  and  nostrils 
open  to  the  view,  we  are  justified  in  calling  them  ugly,  compared 
with  ourselves,  and  in  feeling  proud  that  civilisation  has  gradually 
raised  us  so  far  above  our  country  cousins,  in  beauty  as  in  every- 
thing else,  except  the  art  of  climbing  trees. 

(b)  Savages  are  valuable  as  negative  tests  of  beauty  for  the 
same  reason :  they  enable  us  to  see  what  progress  we  have  made 
in  refining  our  features  into  harmonious  proportions,  and  making 
them  susceptible  of  diverse  emotional  expression.  It  should  be 
noted  that  Nature  constantly  endeavours  to  make  primitive  man- 
kind beautiful,  as  it  does  with  all  other  animals.  Tourists  con- 
stantly note  the  occurrence  of  remarkable  instances  of  Personal 
Beauty  among  the  young  in  most  tribes.  But  this  natural  Beauty 
is  not  appreciated  by  the  vulgar  taste  of  savages,  as  we  saw  a  few 
pages  back  in  a  case  mentioned  by  Mr.  Galton.  Beauty  must  be 
distorted  and  exaggerated  before  it  pleases  the  savage's  taste. 
Paint  must  be  laid  on  an  inch  thick,  the  nose  perforated  and 
"  adorned  "  with  a  ring,  and  ditto  the  abnormally  lengthened  lips. 
This  corrects  the  notion  that  savage  hideousness  is  a  product  of 
Nature.  Nature  may  blunder,  but  never  so  sadly  as  in  the  appear- 
ance of  a  savage  belle  or  warrior ;  and  in  scorning  these  we  do  not 
therefore  scorn  Nature,  but  merely  the  artificial  products  of  the 
vulgar  taste  of  primitive  man. 

(c)  Degraded  Classes. — Poverty,  suffering,  want  of  leisure  for 
mental  culture,  want  of  money  for  sanitary  modes  of  living,  have, 
unfortunately,  produced  in  all  countries  a  large  class  in  whom 
Personal  Beauty  occurs  only  as  an  accident.  That  such  unhappy 
mortals  afford  a  negative  test  of  Beauty  is  seen  by  the  fact  that, 
just  as  savages  are  intermediate  between  monkeys  and  them,  so 
they  stand  between  savages  and  refined  men  in  features  and  ex- 
pression. 

Poverty  alone  does  not  produce  this  vulgar  type  of  personal 
appearance ;  it  is  intellectual  indolence,  moral  vice,  and  hygienic 
indifference  that  are  responsible  for  it.  Hence  this  third  negative 
test  of  Beauty  is  not  at  all  difficult  to  find  in  any  sphere  of 


834  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

society,  from  the  hod-carrier  to  the  aristocrat  with  a  pedigree  of  a 
hundred  generations.  In  every  scale  of  the  social  ladder  may  be 
found  "  features  seamed  by  sickness,  dimmed  by  sensuality,  con- 
vulsed by  passion,  pinched  by  poverty,  shadowed  by  sorrow, 
branded  with  remorse ;  bodies  consumed  with  sloth,  broken  down 
by  labour,  tortured  by  disease,  dishonoured  in  foul  uses ;  intellects 
without  power,  hearts  without  hope,  minds  earthly  and  devilish  " 
(Ruskin). 

(d)  Age    and   Decrepitude. — It    is    not   true,    as   a   famous 
Frenchwoman  has  remarked,  that  age  and  beauty  are  incompatible 
terms.     Even  age  and  Love  are  not  incompatible,  as  we  saw  in 
the  chapter  on  Genius  in  Love;  and  Byron  has  remarked  that 
Love,  like  the  measles,  is  most  dangerous  when  it  comes  late  in 
life. 

There  is  a  special  variety  of  Beauty  for  every  period  of  life, 
and  the  Beauty  of  old  age  certainly  is  not  the  least  attractive  of 
these  varieties.  What  could  be  more  majestic,  more  admirable, 
than  the  head  of  a  Longfellow  in  his  last  days  ?  Provided  health 
of  mind  and  body  has  been  maintained,  even  the  folds  in  the 
cheeks,  the  wrinkles  on  the  forehead  of  old  age,  are  not  unbeauti- 
ful.  But  when  senility  means  decrepitude,  brought  on  by  a 
neglectful  or  otherwise  vicious  life,  then  it  is  positively  ugly.  The 
loveliest  thing  in  the  world  is  a  fair  and  amiable  maiden ;  the 
ugliest  a  vicious  old  hag — savages  and  apes  not  excepted. 

(e)  Disease.  —  Temperance  preachers  and   other  hygienic  re- 
formers commonly  dwell  too  exclusively  on  the  dangers  to  health, 
domestic  peace,  moral  progress,  and  refinement  which  the  indul- 
gence in  various  vices  entails.     If  they  would  insist  with  equal, 
or  even  greater,  emphasis  on  the  havoc  which  diseases  brought  on 
by  intemperance  and  neglect  of   the  laws  of  Health  make  on 
Personal  Beauty,  they  would  double  their  influence  on  their  audi- 
ences or  readers.     For  in  woman's  heart  the  desire  to  be  beautiful 
is  and  always  will  be  the  strongest  motive  to  action  or  non- 
action  ;  nor  are  men,  as  a  rule,  much  less  interested  in  the  matter 
of  preserving  a  handsome  appearance.      It  may  make  some  im- 
pression on  a  man  to  tell  him  that  if  he  takes  ice-water  before 
breakfast,   or  "cock-tails"  at   various  odd  hours  on  an  empty 
stomach,  he  will  ruin  his  digestion ;  but  the  impression  will  be  six 
times  as  deep  if  you  can  convince  him  that  he  will  ere  long  look 
like  that  confirmed  dyspeptic  Jones,  with  lack-lustre  eyes,  sallow 
complexion,  and  a  general  expression  of  premature  senility,  which 
accounts  for  the  fact  that  he  has  been  twice  already  refused  by  the 
girl  he  adores. 


NEGATIVE  TESTS  OF  BEAUTY  3S5 

Or  take  that  girl  over  there  who  never;  takes  a  walk,  always 
sleeps  with  her  windows  hermetically  closed,  and  never  allows  a 
ray  of  sunshine  to  touch  any  part  of  her  body.  Tell  her  she  is 
ruining  her  health  and  she  may  be  momentarily  alarmed  by  this 
vague  warning,  and  walk  half  a  mile  for  a  week  or  so,  until  she 
has  forgotten  it.  But  make  it  clear  to  her  what  is  the  exact  con- 
sequence of  such  neglect  of  the  primal  laws  of  health — namely, 
the  premature  loss  of  every  trace  of  Personal  Beauty  and  youthful 
charm,  with  old-maidenhood  inevitably  staring  her  in  the  face, 
owing  to  her  apathetic  appearance  and  gait,  her  sickly  complexion, 
her  features  distorted  by  frequent  headaches,  brought  on  by  lack 
of  fresh,  cool  air — each  of  which  leaves  its  permanent  trace  in 
the  form  of  an  addition  to  a  wrinkle  or  subtraction  from  the 
plumpness  of  her  cheeks, — tell  her  all  this,  and  that  her  eyes 
will  soon  sink  into  their  sockets  and  have  blue  rings  like 
those  of  an  invalid,  and  a  ghastly  stare — and  she  will,  perhaps, 
be  sufficiently  roused  to  save  her  Health  for  the  sake  of  her 
Beauty. 

We  are  now  confronted  with  the  question,  Why  is  it  that  dis- 
ease is  a  mark  of  ugliness,  health  a  mark  of  Beauty  1  The  old 
Scotch  school  of  sestheticians  think  it  is  all  a  matter  of  associa- 
tion. We  consider  certain  forms  characteristic  of  health  as 
beautiful  simply  because  we  associate  with  them  various  emotions 
of  affection,  the  pleasures  of  love,  etc.,  and  conversely  with 
disease  and  vice.  According  to  Stendhal,  "  La  beaut^  n'est  que 
la  promesse  du  bonheur,"  or,  in  American,  Beauty  is  simply  the 
promise  of  a  "good  time."  But  it  is  Lord  Jeffrey  who,  to  use 
another  appropriate  American  expression,  "  goes  the  whole  hog" 
in  this  matter,  by  practically  denying  the  existence  of  such  a 
thing  as  a  pure,  disinterested,  aesthetic  sense.  Suppose,  he  says, 
"  that  the  smooth  forehead,  the  firm  cheek,  and  the  full  lip,  which 
are  now  so  distinctly  expressive  to  us  of  the  gay  and  vigorous 
periods  of  youth — and  the  clear  and  blooming  complexion,  which 
indicates  health  and  activity — had  been,  in  fact,  the  forms  and 
colours  by  which  old  age  and  sickness  were  characterised ;  and. 
that,  instead  of  being  found  united  to  those  sources  and  seasons  of 
enjoyment,  they  had  been  the  badges  by  which  Nature  pointed 
out  that  state  of  suffering  and  decay  which  is  now  signified  to  us 
by  the  livid  and  emaciated  face  of  sickness,  or  the  wrinkled  front, 
the  quivering  lip,  and  hollow  cheek  of  age;  if  this  were  the 
familiar  law  of  our  nature,  can  it  be  doubted  that  we  should  look 
upon  these  appearances,  not  with  rapture,  but  with  aversion,  and 
consider  it  as  absolutely  ludicrous  or  disgusting  to  speak  of  the 


336  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

beauty  of  what  was  interpreted  by  every  one  as  the  lamented  sign 
of  pain  and  decrepitude  ? 

"Mr.  Knight  himself,  though  a  firm  believer  in  the  intrinsic 
beauty  of  colours,  is  so  much  of  this  opinion  that  he  thinks  it 
entirely  owing  to  those  associations  that  we  prefer  the  tame 
smoothness  and  comparatively  poor  colours  of  a  youthful  face 
to  the  richly  fretted  and  variegated  countenance  of  a  pimpled 
drunkard." 

Bosh  !  and  a  hundred  times  bosh  !  One  feels  that  these  men 
lived  at  a  time  when  port  was  drunk  by  the  bottle,  like  claret, 
and  when  variegated  noses  were  to  a  certain  extent  fashionable. 

Though  every  reader  feels  the  sophistry  and  absurdity  of  the 
above  argumentation,  it  is  not  easy  to  refute  it.  Professor  Blackie 
declaims  against  it,  Ruskin  sneers  at  it,  but  nowhere  have  I  been 
able  to  find  a  definite  direct  refutation  of  the  thesis.  The  fol- 
lowing suggestions  may,  therefore,  be  of  some  value. 

In  the  first  place,  Jeffrey's  supposition  is  equivalent  to  saying 
that  if  black  were  white,  white  would  be  black.  For  if  all  the 
phenomena  of  human  nature  were  reversed,  our  taste,  being  also 
a  "  phenomenon,"  would  be  reversed  too.  If  health  meant  ema- 
ciation, then  a  lover  would  not  be  happy  unless  he  could  kiss  a 
pair  of  leathery  lips  and  embrace  a  skeleton.  Hence  his  sense  of 
touch,  like  his  sight,  would  have  to  be  the  reverse  of  what  they 
are  now ;  and  that  being  the  case,  aesthetic  taste,  which  is  based 
on  the  senses,  would  of  course  be  reversed  too.  But  that  is 
simply  saying  that  if  you  stand  a  man  on  his  head  his  feet  will  be 
in  the  air. 

Secondly,  Lord  Jeffrey's  argument  involves  the  old  fallacy  that 
the  useful  and  the  beautiful  are  identical — that  we  only  consider 
those  things  beautiful  which  afford  us  some  utilitarian  gratification. 
If  this  theory  were  correct,  a  coal-boat  would  be  more  beautiful 
than  a  yacht ;  a  savage's  big  jaw-bone  more  beautiful  than  our 
delicate  ones;  a  clumsy,  dirty,  coarse  -  featured  labourer  more 
beautiful  than  a  society  belle. 

No ;  we  have,  thank  heaven,  an  aesthetic  sense  which  enables 
us  to  see  and  admire  beauty  quite  independently  of  any  "  associa- 
tions "  which  it  may  have  with  our  utilitarian  cravings.  It  is 
possible,  however,  and  even  probable,  that  the  aesthetic  sense  was 
originally  developed  from  utilitarian  associations.  On  this  subject 
Mr.  Grant  Allen  has  some  exceedingly  valuable  remarks  in  his 
interesting  work  on  the  Colour-Sense.  He  there  eloquently  sets 
forth  the  view  that  it  was  the  bright  tints  of  luscious  fruits  that 
first  taught  primitive  man  to  derive  pleasure  from  the  sight  of 


NEGATIVE  TESTS  OF  BEAUTY  837 

coloured  objects.  This  gradually  led  to  a  "  predilection  for  bril- 
liant dyes  and  glistening  pebbles ;  till  at  last  the  whole  series 
culminates  in  that  intense  and  unselfish  enjoyment  of  rich  and 
pure  tints  which  make  civilised  man  linger  so  lovingly  over  the 
hues  of  sunset  and  the  myriad  shades  of  autumn.  .  .  .  Tiie  disin- 
terested affection  can  only  be  reached  by  many  previous  steps  of 
utilitarian  progress."  But — and  here  lies  the  kernel  of  the  argu- 
ment— "  fruit-eaters  and  flower-feeders  derive  pleasure  from  bril- 
liant colours  .  .  .  not  because  those  colours  have  mental  associa- 
tions with  their  food,  but  because  the  structures  which  perceive 
them  have  been  continually  exercised  and  strengthened  by  hered- 
itary use,"  until  at  last  they  formed  a  special  nervous  or  cerebral 
apparatus  which  presides  over  impressions  of  beauty,  and  takes  a 
special  pleasure  in  its  own  activity,  apart  from  all  utilitarian 
considerations. 

Lord  Jeffrey  apparently  lacked  this  special  aesthetic  sense,  as 
shown  by  his  whole  argument,  and  by  his  inability,  which  he 
shared  with  Alison,  of  finding  beauty  in  Nature,  unless  it  was  in 
some  way  associated  with  man's  presence  and  man's  mean  utilities. 

How  different  this  from  the  feelings  of  the  man  who  of  all 
writers  on  Beauty  has  the  most  highly  developed  aesthetic  sense — 
Mr.  Ruskin,  who  has  just  told  us  in  his  Autobiography  that  his 
love  of  Nature,  ardent  as  it  is,  depends  entirely  on  the  wildness 
of  the  scenery,  its  remoteness  from  human  influences  and  asso- 
ciations. 

It  is  this  specially-developed  aesthetic  taste  that  would  prevent 
man  from  calling  flabby  cheeks,  sallow  complexions,  pimpled  noses, 
and  sunken  eyes  beautiful,  if  by  some  miracle  they  should  be 
changed  into  signs  of  health.  For  this  sense  of  beauty  was  first 
educated  not  by  the  sight  of  human  beauty,  but  of  beauty  in 
Nature — fruits,  pebbles,  shells,  lustrous  metals,  etc. ;  and  the 
notions  of  beauty  thus  obtained  have  been  gradually  transferred 
to  human  beings  as  standards  of  attractiveness.  It  can  be  shown 
that  what  the  best  judges  pronounce  the  highest  human  beauty, 
is  so  because  it  partakes  of  certain  characteristics  which  we  find 
beautiful  throughout  Nature.  And  conversely,  what  we  consider 
ugly  in  the  human  form  and  features  would  also  be  called  ugly  in 
external  objects ;  in  both  cases,  be  it  distinctly  understood,  with- 
out any  direct  reference  to  utilitarian  considerations,  and  some- 
times even  in  opposition  to  them,  as  in  our  admiration  of  a 
beautiful  poisonous  plant  or  snake,  or  a  tiger. 

It  is  these  universal  characteristics  of  Beauty,  found  in  man  as 
in  animals,  that  we  now  have  to  consider.  They  are  the  positive 

z 


338  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

criteria  of  Beauty,  and  may  be  regarded  as  a  new  set  of  "  over- 
tones" or  leading  motives  for  the  remainder  of  this  volume, 
although  the  old  ones  will  occasionally  reappear  and  combine  with 
them. 

POSITIVE   TESTS   OP   BEAUTY 

Of  these  there  are  at  least  eight — Symmetry,  Curvature, 
Gradation,  Smoothness,  Delicacy,  Colour,  Lustre,  Expression, 
including  Variety  and  Individuality. 

(a)  Symmetry. — "  In  all  perfectly  beautiful  objects,"  says  Mr. 
Buskin,  ''there  is  found  the  opposition  of  one  part  to  another, 
and  a  reciprocal  balance  obtained :  in  animals  the  balance  being 
commonly  between  opposite  sides  (note  the  disagreeableness  occa- 
sioned by  the  exception  in  flat  fish,  having  the  eyes  on  one  side  of 
the  head) ;  but  in  vegetables  the  opposition  is  less  distinct,  as  in 
the  boughs  on  opposite  sides  of  trees,  and  the  leaves  and  sprays 
on  each  side  of  the  boughs,  and  in  dead  matter  less  perfect  still, 
often  amounting  only  to  a  certain  tendency  towards  a  balance,  as  in 
the  opposite  sides  of  valleys  and  alternate  windings  of  streams. 
In  things  in  which  perfect  symmetry  is,  from  their  nature,  impos- 
sible or  improper,  a  balance  must  be  at  least  in  some  measure 
expressed  before  they  can  be  beheld  with  pleasure.  .  .  .  Symmetiy 
is  the  opposition  of  equal  quantities  to  each  other.  Proportion 
the  connection  of  unequal  quantities  with  each  other.  The  pro- 
perty of  a  tree  in  sending  out  equal  boughs  on  opposite  sides  is 
symmetrical.  Its  sending  out  shorter  and  smaller  towards  the 
top,  proportional.  In  the  human  face  its  balance  of  opposite  sides 
is  symmetry,  its  division  upwards,  proportion." 

Mr.  Darwin  thus  gives  his  testimony  as  to  the  prevalence  of 
symmetry  in  Nature :  "  If  beautiful  objects  had  been  created 
solely  for  man's  gratification,  it  ought  to  be  shown  that  before 
man  appeared  there  was  less  beauty  on  the  face  of  the  earth  than 
since  he  came  on  the  stage.  Were  the  beautiful  volute  and  cone 
shells  of  the  Eocene  epoch,  and  the  gracefully  sculptured  ammon- 
ites of  the  Secondary  period,  created  that  man  might  ages  after- 
wards admire  them  in  his  cabinet  ?  Few  objects  are  more  beautiful 
than  the  minute  silicious  cases  of  the  diatomacese:  were  they 
created  that  they  might  be  examined  and  admired  under  the 
higher  powers  of  the  microscope  1  The  beauty  in  this  latter  case, 
and  in  many  others,  is  apparently  wholly  due  to  symmetry  of 
growth"  (Origin  of  Species,  chap,  vi.) 

In  the  floral  world,  again,  the  natural  tendency  is  always 
towards  symmetry.  Wind-fertilised  flowers  are  symmetrical  in 


POSITIVE  TESTS  OF  BEAUTY  839 

form;  and  "as  Mr.  Darwin  has  observed,  there  does  not  appeal 
to  be  a  single  instance  of  an  irregular  flower  which  is  not  fertilised 
by  insects  or  birds  "  (Lubbock),  and  therefore  modified  in  form  in 
the  effort  to  adapt  itself  to  useful  insects  and  to  exclude  pirates. 

Throughout  the  animal  kingdom,  including  man,  this  law  of 
symmetry  is  true.  Hence  it  is  not  likely  that  we  should  ever 
admire  a  lame  leg,  a  crooked  nose,  bent  on  one  side,  eyes  that  are 
not  mates,  or  a  face  several  inches  longer  on  one  side  than  the 
other,  owing  to  paralysis — as  beautiful,  even  if,  as  Jeffrey  would 
have  it,  Madame  Nature  should  suddenly  take  it  into  her  head  to 
associate  such  abnormalities  with  health  instead  of  with  disease. 

(b)  Gradation. — On  this  law  of  Nature  Mr.  Ruskiu  again  has 
spoken  at  once  more  scientifically  and  poetically  than  any  other 
writer  on  aesthetics  :  "  What  curvature  is  to  lines,  gradation  is  to 
shades  and  colours.  .  .  .  For  instances  of  the  complete  absence  of 
gradation  we  must  look  to  man's  work,  or  to  his  disease  and 
decrepitude.  Compare  the  gradated  colours  of  the  rainbow  with 
the  stripes  of  a  target,  and  the  gradual  concentration  of  the  youth- 
ful blood  in  the  cheek  with  an  abrupt  patch  of  rouge,  or  with  the 
sharply-drawn  veining  of  old  age. 

"  Gradation  is  so  inseparable  a  quality  of  all  natural  shade  and 
colour  that  the  eye  refuses  in  art  to  understand  anything  as  either 
which  appears  without  it ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  nearly  all 
the  gradations  of  nature  are  so  subtile,  and  between  degrees  of 
tint  so  slightly  separated,  that  no  human  hand  can  in  any  wise 
equal,  or  do  anything  more  than  suggest  the  idea  of  them." 

The  following  remarks  which  the  same  writer  makes  in  another 
place  concerning  Gradation  show  at  the  same  time  how  asinine  it 
is  for  a  savage  or  any  other  person  of  uncultivated  taste  to  set 
himself  up  as  a  judge  of  Personal  Beauty,  as  good  as  any  one  else, 
on  the  plea  that  it  is  all  "  a  matter  of  taste  "  and  de  gustibus  non 
est  disputandum : — 

"  When  the  eye  is  quite  uncultivated,  it  sees  that  a  man  is  a 
man,  and  a  face  is  a  face,  but  has  no  idea  what  shadows  or  lights 
fall  upon  the  form  or  features.  Cultivate  it  to  some  degree  of 
artistic  power,  and  it  will  then  see  shadows  distinctly,  but  only 
the  more  vigorous  of  them.  Cultivate  it  still  further,  and  it  will 
see  light  within  light,  and  shadow  within  shadow,  and  will  con- 
tinually refuse  to  rest  in  what  it  has  already  discovered,  that  it 
may  pursue  what  is  more  removed  and  more  subtle,  until  at  last 
it  comes  to  give  its  chief  attention  and  display  its  chief  power  on 
gradations  which  to  an  untrained  faculty  are  partly  matters  of 
indifference  and  partly  imperceptible." 


840  KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

The  words  italicised  enable  us  to  appreciate  what  Sokrates 
must  have  had  in  his  mind  when  he  distinguished  between  that 
which  is  beautiful  and  that  which  only  appears  beautiful 
JEsthetic  training  enables  us  to  see  things  as  they  are,  instead  of 
as  they  appear  through  inattention,  through  ignorance,  or  through 
clouds  of  national  prejudice,  or  individual  utilitarianism. 

The  way  in  which  aesthetic  training  enables  us  to  see  gradations 
of  beauty  previously  imperceptible  can  be  most  strikingly  illus- 
trated in  the  case  of  music.  There  are  thousands  of  intelligent 
folks  who  cannot  tell  the  difference  between  a  superb  Steinway 
Grand,  just  tuned  for  a  concert,  and  a  harsh,  claugy,  mountain- 
hotel  piano  that  has  not  been  tuned  for  two  years.  But  give 
these  persons  a  thorough  musical  education,  and  they  will  soon  be 
able  to  smile  at  Jeffrey's  notion  that  the  tone  of  the  hotel-piano 
was  quite  as  beautiful  as  that  of  the  Steinway,  because  it  seemed 
so  to  them.  It  is  not  only  the  imagination  but  the  senses  them- 
selves that  require  training.  A  Hottentot  or  any  unmusical 
person  cannot  tell  the  difference  between  two  consecutive  tones  on 
the  piano,  whereas  a  skilled  musician  can  detect  all  the  gradations 
from  one  tone  to  another,  down  to  the  sixty-fourth  part  of  a 
semitone ! 

"  It  is  all  a  matter  of  taste  !  *  Precisely.  Of  good  taste  and 
bad  taste. 

Examples  of  gradation  in  the  human  form  are  the  gradual 
tapering  of  the  limbs  and  the  fingers,  the  exquisite  line  from  the 
female  neck  to  the  shoulders  and  the  bosom,  the  blushes  on  the 
cheeks,  so  long  as  they  do  not  assume  the  form  of  a  hectic  flush, 
and  the  delicate  tints  of  the  complexion  in  general,  varying  with 
emotional  states,  according  as  the  veins  and  arteries  are  more  or 
less  filled  with  the  vital  fluid. 

Is  it  then  "  entirely  owing  to  their  associations  "  with  health 
or  disease  that  we  prefer  the  complexion  of  a  youthful  face  to  the 
hideous  daubs  of  red  which  Knight  refers  to  as  the  "  richly  fretted 
and  variegated  countenance  of  a  pimpled  drunkard  "  1  Is  it  owing 
to  such  associations  that  we  prefer  the  delicately  gradated  blushes 
of  coloured  marble  to  the  richly  bedaubed  countenance  of  a  pimpled 
brickbat  ?  But  it  would  be  a  waste  of  time  to  refer  again  to  the 
crude  anti-aesthetic  notions  of  Messrs.  Knight,  Alison,  and  Jeffrey. 

One  more  exquisite  illustration  of  subtle  gradation  in  the 
human  form  divine  may  be  cited  from  Winckelmann : — 

"The  soul,  though  a  simple  existence,  brings  forth  at  once, 
and  in  an  instant,  many  different  ideas ;  so  it  is  with  the  beautiful 
youthful  outline,  which  appears  simple,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  haa 


POSITIVE  TESTS  OF  BEAUTY  341 

infinitely  different  variations,  and  that  soft  tapering  which  is 
difficult  of  attainment  in  a  column,  is  still  more  so  in  the  diverse 
forms  of  the  youthful  body.  Among  the  innumerable  kinds  of 
columns  in  Rome  some  appear  pre-eminently  elegant  on  account 
of  this  very  tapering ;  of  these  I  have  particularly  noted  two  of 
granite,  which  I  am  always  studying  anew:  just  so  rare  is  a 
perfect  form,  even  in  the  most  beautiful  youth,  which  has  a 
stationary  point  in  our  sex  still  less  than  in  the  female." 

(c)  Curvature. — "  That  all  forms  of  acknowledged  beauty  are 
composed  exclusively  of  curves  will,"  Mr.  Ruskin  believes,  "  be  at 
once  allowed ;  but  that  which  there  will  be  need  more  especially 
to  prove,  is  the  subtility  and  constancy  of  curvature  in  all  natural 
forms  whatsoever.  I  believe  that,  except  in  crystals,  in  certain 
mountain  forms  admitted  for  the  sake  of  sublimity  or  contrast  (as 
in  the  slope  of  debris),  in  rays  of  light,  in  the  levels  of  calm  water 
and  alluvial  land,  and  in  some  few  organic  developments,  there  are 
no  lines  or  surfaces  of  nature  without  curvature,  though,  as  we 
before  saw  in  clouds,  more  especially  in  their  under  lines  towards 
the  horizon,  and  in  vast  and  extended  plains,  right  lines  are  often 
suggested  which  are  not  actual.  Without  these  we  should  not  be 
sensible  of  the  value  of  contrasting  curves ;  and  while,  therefore, 
for  the  most  part,  the  eye  is  fed  in  natural  forms  with  a  grace  of 
curvature  which  no  hand  nor  instrument  can  follow,  other  means 
are  provided  to  give  beauty  to  those  surfaces  which  are  admitted 
for  contrast,  as  in  water  by  its  reflection  of  the  gradations  which 
it  possesses  not  itself." 

In  a  footnote  to  the  last  edition  of  the  Modern  Painters  he 
adds  regarding  the  apparent  exceptions  named  :  "  Crystals  are 
indeed  subject  to  rectilinear  limitations,  but  their  real  surfaces  are 
continually  curved ;  the  level  of  calm  water  is  only  right  lined 
when  it  is  shoreless." 

On  the  other  hand,  "Generally  in  all  ruin  and  disease,  and 
interference  of  one  order  of  being  with  another  (as  in  the  cattle 
line  of  park  trees),  the  curves  vanish,  and  violently  opposed  or 
broken  and  unmeaning  lines  take  their  place."  I  feel  tempted  to 
cite  another  most  admirable  passage  on  curvature  throughout 
Nature — even  where  it  is  least  looked  for,  and  the  untrained  eye 
cannot  see  it — in  the  shattered  walls  and  crests  of  mountains 
which  "  seem  to  rise  in  a  gloomy  contrast  with  the  soft  waves  of 
bank  and  wood  beneath."  But  it  is  too  long  to  quote,  and  I  can 
only  advise  the  reader  most  earnestly  to  look  it  up  in  chapter 
xiv.  vol.  iv. 

"  Straight  lines,"  Professor  Bain  observes,  "  are  rendered  artistic 


342  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

only  by  associations  of  power,  regularity,  fitness,  etc."  "  In  some 
situations  straight  lines  are  aesthetic.  ...  In  the  human  figure 
there  underlies  the  curved  outline  a  certain  element  of  rigidity 
and  straightness,  indicating  strength  in  the  supporting  limbs  and 
spine.  Whenever  firmness  is  required,  there  must  be  a  solid 
structure,  and  straightness  of  form  is  a  frequent  accompaniment 
of  solidity.  The  straight  nose  and  the  flat  brow  are  subsidiary  to 
the  movement  and  the  stability  of  the  face." 

Yet  even  our  straight  limbs  follow  in  their  motions  the  law 
of  curvature.  And  to  this  fact  that  they  move  more  easily  and 
naturally  in  a  curved  than  in  a  straight  line,  which  requires 
laborious  adjustment,  Bain  traces  part  of  our  superior  pleasure  in 
rounded  lines. 

What  infinite  subtlety  and  variety  Curvature  is  capable  of  is 
vividly  brought  before  the  eyes  by  Winckelmann  :  "  The  forms  of 
a  beautiful  body  are  determined  by  lines  the  centre  of  which  is 
constantly  changing,  and  which,  if  continued,  would  never  describe 
circles.  They  are,  consequently,  more  simple,  but  also  more  com- 
plex, than  a  circle,  which,  however  large  or  small  it  may  be, 
always  has  the  same  centre,  and  either  includes  others  or  is  in- 
cluded in  others.  This  diversity  was  sought  after  by  the  Greeks 
in  works  of  all  kinds;  and  their  discernment  of  its  beauty  led 
them  to  introduce  the  same  system  even  into  the  form  of  their 
utensils  and  vases,  whose  easy  and  elegant  outline  is  drawn  after 
the  same  rule,  that  is,  by  a  line  which  must  be  found  by  means  of 
several  circles,  for  all  these  works  have  an  elliptical  figure,  and 
herein  consists  their  beauty.  The  greater  unity  there  is  in  the 
junction  of  the  forms,  and  in  the  flowing  of  one  out  of  another,  so 
much  the  greater  is  the  beauty  of  the  whole." 

Masculine  and  Feminine  Beauty. — The  universality  of  curva- 
ture as  a  form  of  beautiful  objects  throughout  nature  and  art  is 
of  importance  in  helping  us  to  determine  the  question  which  is  the 
more  beautiful  form,  a  perfect  man  or  a  perfect  woman — an  Apollo 
or  a  Venus  1  A  Venus,  no  doubt.  In  those  qualities  which  are 
subsumed  under  the  terms  of  the  sublime  or  the  characteristic — 
in  strength,  manly  dignity,  intellectual  power,  majesty — the  mas- 
culine type,  no  doubt,  is  superior  to  the  feminine.  But  in  Beauty 
proper — in  the  roundness  and  delicacy  of  contours,  in  the  smooth- 
ness of  complexion  and  its  subtle  gradations  of  colour,  in  the 
symmetrical  roundness  and  lustrous  expressiveness  of  the  eyes — 
the  feminine  type  is  pre-eminent. 

"Woman,"  says  Professor  Kollmann,  "is  smaller,  more  delicate, 
but  also  softer  and  more  graceful  (schwungvolier)  in  form,  in  her 


POSITIVE  TESTS  OF  BEAUTY  34S 

breasts,  hips,  thighs,  and  calves.  No  line  on  her  body  is  short 
and  sharply  angular;  they  all  swell,  or  vault  themselves  in  a 
gentle  curve.  .  .  The  neck  and  the  rounded  shoulders  are  con- 
nected by  gracefully  curved  lines,  whereas  a  man's  neck  is  placed 
more  at  a  right  angle  to  the  more  straight  and  angular  shoulders. 
.  .  .  The  hair  is  softer,  the  skin  more  tender  and  transparent. 
All  the  forms  are  more  covered  over  with  adipose  tissue,  and 
connected  by  those  gradual  transitions  which  produce  the  gently 
rounded  outlines ;  whereas  in  a  man  everything — muscles,  sinews, 
blood-vessels,  bones — is  more  conspicuous." 

Schopenhauer,  accordingly,  was  clearly  in  the  wrong  when  he 
endeavoured  to  make  out  that  man  is  vastly  superior  to  woman  in 
physical  beauty, — a  notion  which  Professor  Huxley,  too,  does  not 
appear  to  disapprove  of  very  violently.  At  the  same  time  it  is, 
no  doubt,  true  that  there  are  more  good  specimens  of  masculine 
beauty  in  most  countries  than  of  feminine  beauty;  true  also  that 
man's  beauty  lasts  much  longer  than  woman's.  A  boy  is  more 
beautiful  than  a  girl  under  sixteen,  for  the  very  reason  that  his 
form  is  more  like  that  of  an  adult  woman  than  a  girl's  is.  From 
eighteen  to  twenty-five  woman  is  more  beautiful  than  man ;  while 
after  thirty,  owing  to  the  almost  universal  neglect  of  the  laws  of 
health — women  are  apt  to  become  either  too  rotund,  which  ruins 
their  grace  and  delicacy,  or  too  angular — more  angular  than  a  man 
under  fifty. 

(d)  Delicacy  and  Grace. — The  difference  between  masculine 
and  feminine  beauty  and  the  superiority  of  the  latter  is  also  in- 
directly brought  out  in  Burke's  remarks  on  Delicacy,  which, 
though  open  to  criticism  in  one  or  two  points,  are  on  the  whole 
admirable  and  exhaustive  : — 

"  An  air  of  robustness  and  strength  is  very  prejudicial  to  beauty. 
An  appearance  of  delicacy,  and  even  of  fragility,  is  almost  essential 
to  it.  Whoever  examines  the  vegetable  or  animal  creation  will 
find  this  observation  to  be  founded  in  nature.  It  is  not  the  oak, 
the  ash,  or  the  elm,  or  any  of  the  robust  trees  of  the  forest  which 
we  consider  as  beautiful ;  they  are  awful  and  majestic,  they  inspire 
a  sort  of  reverence.  It  is  the  delicate  myrtle,  it  is  the  orange,  it 
is  the  almond,  it  is  the  jasmine,  it  is  the  vine,  which  we  look  on 
as  vegetable  beauties.  It  is  the  flowery  species,  so  remarkable  for 
its  weakness  and  momentary  duration,  that  gives  us  the  liveliest 
idea  of  beauty  and  elegance.  Among  animals  the  greyhound  is 
more  beautiful  than  the  mastiff,  and  the  delicacy  of  a  jennet,  a 
barb,  or  an  Arabian  horse  is  much  more  amiable  than  the  strength 
and  stability  of  some  horses  of  war  or  carriage. 


844  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

"I  need  here  say  little  of  the  fair  sex,  where  I  believe  the 
point  will  be  easily  allowed  me.  The  beauty  of  women  is  con- 
siderably owing  to  their  weakness  or  delicacy,  and  is  even  enhanced 
by  their  timidity,  a  quality  of  mind  analogous  to  it.  I  would  not 
here  be  understood  to  say  that  weakness  betraying  very  bad  health 
has  any  share  in  beauty;  but  the  ill  effect  of  this  is  not  because 
it  is  weakness,  but  because  the  ill  state  of  health,  which  produces 
such  weakness,  alters  the  other  conditions  of  beauty;  the  parts  in 
such  a  case  collapse,  the  bright  colour,  the  lumen  purpureum 
juventce  is  gone,  and  the  fine  variation  is  lost  in  wrinkles,  sudden 
breaks,  and  right  lines." 

Delicacy  is  a  quality  closely  related  to  grace,  or  beauty  in 
motion  and  attitude.  "  Grace,"  says  Dr.  J.  A.  Symonds,  "  is  a 
striking  illustration  of  the  union  of  the  two  principles  of  similarity 
and  variety.  For  the  secret  of  graceful  action  is  that  the  sym- 
metry is  preserved  through  all  the  varieties  of  position."  This  is 
well  put;  but  the  first  condition  and  essence  of  grace  is  that  there 
must  be  an  exact  correspondence  between  the  work  done  and  the 
limb  which  does  it.  The  attitude  of  an  oak-trunk,  with  nothing 
on  the  top  but  a  geranium  bush,  however  symmetrical,  would 
always  be  ungraceful,  owing  to  the  ludicrous  disproportion  between 
the  support  and  the  thing  supported.  Conversely,  a  weak  fern- 
stalk,  trying  to  support  a  branch  of  heavy  cactus  leaves,  would  be 
equally  ungraceful ;  for  there  must  be  neither  a  waste  of  energy 
nor  a  sense  of  effort.  Part  of  this  feeling  may  perhaps  be  traced 
to  sympathy — thus  showing  how  various  emotions  enter  into  our 
aesthetic  judgments,  sometimes  weakening,  sometimes  strengthening 
them.  As  Professor  Bain  remarks,  &  propos  :  "  We  love  to  have 
removed  from  our  sight  every  aspect  of  suffering,  and  none  more 
so  than  the  suffering  of  toil." 

Grace  is  almost  as  powerful  to  inspire  Love  as  Beauty  itself. 
Women  know  this  instinctively,  and  in  order  to  acquire  the 
Delicacy  which  leads  to  grace,  they  deprive  their  bodies  of  air  and 
sunshine  and  strengthening  sleep,  hoping  thereby  to  acquire  arti- 
ficially, through  ill-health,  what  Nature  has  denied  them.  Fortu- 
nately such  violations  of  the  laws  of  health  always  frustrate  then* 
object  Delicacy  conjoined  with  Health  inspires  Love,  but  delicacy 
born  of  disease  inspires  only  pity — a  feeling  which  may  inspire  in 
a  woman  what  she  imagines  is  Love,  but  in  a  man  never. 

(e)  Smoothness  is  another  attribute  of  Beauty  on  which  Burke 
was  the  first  to  place  proper  emphasis :  It  is,  he  says,  "  a 
quality  so  essential  to  beauty  that  I  do  not  recollect  anything 
beautiful  that  is  not  smooth.  In  trees  and  flowers,  smooth  leaves 


POSITIVE  TESTS  OF  BEAUTY  345 

are  beautiful ;  smooth  slopes  of  earth  in  gardens ;  smooth  streams 
in  the  landscape ;  smooth  coats  of  birds  and  beasts  in  animal 
beauties ;  in  fine  women,  smooth  skins :  and  in  several  sorts  of 
ornamental  furniture,  smooth  and  polished  surfaces.  .  .  .  Any 
ruggedness,  any  sudden  projection,  any  sharp  angle,  is  in  the 
highest  degree  contrary  to  the  idea  of  beauty." 

Though  there  are  exceptions  to  this  rule  of  smoothness — includ- 
ing such  a  marvel  of  beauty  as  the  moss-rose,  as  well  as  various 
leaves  covered  with  down,  etc. — yet,  on  the  whole,  Burke  is  right. 
Certainly  the  smooth  white  hand  of  a  delicate  lady  is  more  beauti- 
ful than  the  rough,  horny  "  paws"  of  a  bricklayer ;  and  the  inferior 
beauty  of  a  man's  arm  is  owing  as  much  to  its  rough  scattered 
hairs  as  to  the  prominence  of  the  muscles,  in  contrast  to  the  smooth 
and  rounded  arm  of  woman.  In  animals,  however,  hairs  on  the 
limbs  are  not  unbeautiful,  because  they  are  dense  enough  to  over- 
lap, and  thus  form  a  hairy  surface  admirable  alike  for  its  soft 
smoothness,  its  gloss,  and  its  colour. 

(/)  Lustre  and  Colour. — Lustrous,  sparkling  eyes,  glossy  hair, 
pearly  teeth, — where  would  human  beauty  be  without  them — 
without  the  delicate  tints  and  blushes  of  the  skin,  the  brown  or  blue 
iris,  the  golden  or  chestnut  locks,  the  ebony  eyebrows  and  lashes  1 

Yet  the  greatest  art-critics  incline  to  the  opinion  that,  on  the 
whole,  colour  is  a  less  essential  ingredient  of  beauty  than  form. 
"  Colour  assists  beauty,"  says  Winckelmann,  but  "  the  essence  of 
beauty  consists  not  in  colour  but  in  shape."  "  A  negro  might  be 
called  handsome  when  the  conformation  of  his  face  is  handsome." 
"  The  colour  of  bronze  and  of  the  black  and  greenish  basalt  does  not 
detract  from  the  beauty  of  the  antique  heads,"  hence  "  we  possess 
a  knowledge  of  the  beautiful,  although  in  an  unreal  dress  and  of 
a  disagreeable  colour." 

Similarly  Mr.  Ruskin,  who  remarks  of  colour  that  it  "  is  richly 
bestowed  on  the  highest  works  of  creation,  and  the  eminent  sign 
and  seal  of  perfection  in  them  ;  being  associated  with  life  in  the 
human  form,  with  light  in  the  sky,  with  purity  and  hardness  in 
the  earth, — death,  night,  and  pollution  of  all  kinds  being  colour- 
less. And  although  if  form  and  colour  be  brought  into  complete 
opposition,  so  that  it  should  be  put  to  us  as  a  stern  choice  whether 
we  should  have  a  work  of  art  all  of  form,  without  colour  (as  an 
Albert  Diirer's  engraving),  or  all  of  colour,  without  form  (as  au 
imitation  of  mother-of-pearl),  form  is  beyond  all  comparison  the 
more  precious  of  the  two  .  .  .  yet  if  colour  be  introduced  at  all, 
it  is  necessary  that,  whatever  else  may  be  wrong,  that  should  l>e 
right,"  etc. 


840  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Again  :  "  An  oak  is  an  oak,  whether  green  with  spring  or  red 
with  winter ;  a  dahlia  is  a  dahlia,  whether  it  be  yellow  or  crimson ; 
and  if  some  monster-hunting  botanist  should  ever  frighten  the 
flower  blue,  still  it  will  be  a  dahlia;  but  let  one  curve  of  the 
petals — one  groove  of  the  stamens— be  wanting,  and  the  flower 
ceases  to  be  the  same.  Let  the  roughness  of  the  bark  and  the 
angles  of  the  boughs  be  smoothed  or  diminished,  and  the  oak  ceases 
to  be  an  oak ;  but  let  it  retain  its  inward  structure  and  outward 
form,  and  though  its  leaves  grew  white,  or  pink,  or  blue,  or  tri- 
colour, it  would  be  a  white  oak,  or  a  pink  oak,  or  a  republican  oak, 
but  an  oak  still." 

"  If  we  look  at  Nature  carefully,  we  shall  find  that  her  colours 
are  in  a  state  of  perpetual  confusion  and  indistinctness,  while  her 
forms,  as  told  by  light  and  shade,  are  invariably  clear,  distinct, 
and  speaking.  The  stones  and  gravel  of  the  bank  catch  green 
reflections  from  the  boughs  above ;  the  bashes  receive  grays  and 
yellows  from  the  ground ;  every  hairbreadth  of  polished  surface 
gives  a  little  bit  of  the  blue  of  the  sky,  or  the  gold  of  the  sun,  like 
a  star  upon  the  local  colour;  this  local  colour,  changeful  and 
uncertain  in  itself,  is  again  disguised  and  modified  by  the  hue  o'f 
the  light  or  quenched  in  the  gray  of  the  shadow ;  and  the  confusion 
and  blending  of  tint  is  altogether  so  great  that  were  we  left  to  find 
out  what  objects  were  by  their  colours  only,  we  would  scarcely  in 
place  distinguish  the  boughs  of  a  tree  from  the  air  beyond  them  or 
the  ground  beneath  them.  I  know  that  people  unpractised  in 
art  will  not  believe  this  at  first ;  but  if  they  have  accurate  powers 
of  observation,  they  may  soon  ascertain  it  for  themselves;  they 
will  find  that,  while  they  can  scarcely  ever  determine  the  exact  hue 
of  anything,  except  when  it  occurs  in  large  masses,  as  in  a  green 
field  or  the  blue  sky,  the  form,  as  told  by  light  and  shade,  is 
always  decided  and  evident,  and  the  source  of  the  chief  character 
of  every  object." 

Professor  Bain  remarks  on  this  topic  that  "  Among  the  several 
kinds  of  beauty,  the  eye  takes  most  delight  in  colour.  .  .  .  For 
this  reason  we  find  the  poets  borrowing  more  of  their  epithets  from 
colours  than  from  any  other  topic." 

This  view  seems  to  be  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  lovers  in 
expatiating  on  the  beauty  of  their  Dulcineas  seem  to  have  much 
more  to  say  about  their  brown  or  golden  locks,  their  light  or  dark 
complexion,  their  blue  or  black  eyes,  than  about  the  shape  of  their 
features.  This,  however,  partly  finds  its  explanation  in  the  fact 
that  colour,  being  a  sensuous  quality,  is  more  easily  and  more 
directly  appreciated  than  form,  the  perception  of  which  is  a  much 


POSITIVE  TESTS  OF  BEAUTY  84  r 

more  complicated  matter,  being  a  translation  into  intellectual  terms 
of  remembered  impressions  of  touch,  associated  with  certain  colours, 
lights,  and  shades  which  recall  them ;  and  partly  in  the  greater 
ease  with  which  peculiarities  of  colour  are  referred  to  than  peculi- 
arities of  form.  In  the  days  of  ancient  Greece  the  nomenclature 
of  colours  was  equally  undeveloped,  and  is  so  vague  in  Homer  that 
Gladstone  and  Geiger  actually  set  up  the  theory  tltat  HomerV 
colour-sense  was  imperfect,  and  that  that  sense  has  been  gradually 
developed  within  historic  times, — a  theory  which  I  have  confuted 
on  anatomical  grounds  in  Macmillan's  Magazine,  Dec.  187.9. 

That  as  regards  human  beauty  colour  is  of  less  importance  than 
form  is  shown,  moreover,  in  this,  that  a  girl  with  regular  features 
and  a  freckled  complexion  will  much  sooner  find  a  lover  than  one- 
with  the  most  delicately-coloured  complexion,  conjoined  with  a  big 
mouth,  irregular  nose,  or  sunken  cheeks.  And  a  beautifully-shaped 
eye  is  sure  to  be  admired  by  all,  no  matter  whether  blue,  gray,  or 
brown ;  whereas  an  eye  that  is  too  small  or  otherwise  defective  in 
form  can  never  be  redeemed  by  the  most  beautiful  colour  or 
brilliancy. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  several  things  to  be  said  in  favour 
of  colour  that  will  mitigate  our  judgment  on  this  point.  In  the 
first  place,  colour  is  more  perfect  in  its  way  than  form,  so  that  it 
is  impossible  ever  to  improve  on  it  by  idealising,  as  it  is  often  with 
form.  As  Mr.  Buskin  remarks,  "  Form  may  be  attained  in  per- 
fection by  painters,  who,  in  their  course  of  study,  are  continually 
altering  or  idealising  it ;  but  only  the  sternest  fidelity  will  reach 
colouring.  Idealise  or  alter  in  that,  and  you  are  lost.  Whether 
you  alter  by  debasing  or  exaggerating,  by  glare  or  by  decline,  one  fate 
is  for  you — ruin.  .  .  .  Colour  is  sacred  in  that  you  must  keep  to 
facts.  Hence  the  apparent  anomaly  that  the  only  schools  of  colour 
are  the  schools  of  realism." 

Again,  looking  at  Nature  with  an  artist's  eye,  Ruskin  discovered 
and  frequently  alludes  to  the  "  apparent  connection  of  brilliancy 
of  colour  with  vigour  of  life,"  and  Mr.  Wallace,  looking  at  Nature 
with  a  naturalist's  eye,  established  this  "  apparent  connection  "  as 
a  scientific  fact.  The  passage  in  which  he  sums  up  his  views  has 
been  once  already  quoted  ;  but  it  is  of  such  extreme  importance  in 
enforcing  the  lesson  that  beauty  is  impossible  without  health,  that 
it  may  be  quoted  again  : — 

"  The  colours  of  an  animal  usually  fade  during  disease  or  weak- 
ness, while  robust  health  and  vigour  adds  to  its  intensity.  ...  In 
all  quadrupeds  a  '  dull  coat '  is  indicative  of  ill-health  or  low  con- 
dition ;  while  a  glossy  coat  and  sparkling  eye  are  the  invariable 


348  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

accompaniments  of  health  and  energy.  The  same  rule  applies  to 
the  feathers  of  birds,  whose  colours  are  only  seen  in  their  purity 
during  perfect  health ;  and  a  similar  phenomenon  occurs  even 
among  insects,  for  the  bright  hues  of  caterpillars  begin  to  fade  as 
soon  as  they  become  inactive,  preparatory  to  their  undergoing 
transformation.  Even  in  the  Vegetable  Kingdom  we  see  the  same 
thing;  for  the  tints  of  foliage  are  deepest,  and  the  colours  of 
flowers  and  fruits  richest,  on  those  plants  which  are  in  the  most 
healthy  and  vigorous  condition." 

(g)  Expression,  Variety,  Individuality. — Besides  the  circum- 
stances that  colour  is  more  uniformly  perfect  in  Nature  than  form, 
and  that  it  is  always  associated  with  Health,  without  which  Beauty 
is  impossible,  another  peculiarity  may  be  mentioned  in  its  favour. 
The  complexion  is  a  kaleidoscope  whose  delicate  blushes  and 
constant  changes  of  tint,  from  the  ashen  pallor  of  despair  to  the 
rosy  flush  of  delight,  are  the  fascinating  signs  of  emotional  expres- 
sion. And  herein  lies  the  superior  beauty  of  the  human  complexion 
over  all  other  tinted  objects :  it  reflects  not  only  the  hues  of 
surrounding  external  bodies,  but  all  the  moods  of  the  soul  within. 

Form  without  colour  is  form  without  expression.  But  form 
without  expression  soon  ceases  to  fascinate,  for  we  constantly  crave 
novelty  and  variety;  and  form  is  one,  while  expression  is  infinitely 
varied  and  ever  new.  Herein  lies  the  extreme  importance  of  ex- 
pression as  a  test  of  Beauty.  Colour,  of  course,  is  only  one  phase 
of  expression.  The  soul  not  only  changes  the  tints  of  the  com- 
plexion, but  liquifies  the  facial  muscles  so  that  they  can  be  readily 
moulded  into  forms  characteristic  of  joy,  sadness,  hope,  fear,  adora- 
tion, hatred,  anger,  affection,  etc. 

Why  is  the  portrait-painter  so  infinitely  superior  to  the  photo- 
grapher? Because  the  photographer  —  paradoxical  as  this  may 
seem — gives  you  a  less  realistic  picture  of  yourself  than  the  artist. 
He  only  gives  you  the  fixed  form,  or  at  most  a  transient  expression 
which,  being  fixed  permanently,  loses  its  essence,  which  is  motion 
— and  thus  becomes  a  caricature — an  exaggeration  in  duration. 
But  the  artist  studies  you  by  the  hour,  makes  you  talk,  notes  the 
habitual  forms  of  expression  most  characteristic  of  your  individu- 
ality ;  and,  blending  these  into  a  sort  of  "  typical  portrait "  of  your 
various  individual  traits,  makes  a  picture  which  reveals  all  the 
advantages  of  art  over  mere  solar  mechanism  or  photography. 

This  explains  why  some  of  the  most  charming  persons  we  know 
never  appear  well  in  a  photograph,  while  others  much  less  charm- 
ing do.  The  beauty  of  the  latter  lies  in  form,  of  the  former  in 
expression.  But  expression  is  much  more  potent  to  inspire  admi- 


POSITIVE  TESTS  OF  BEAUTY  349 

ration  and  Love  than  mere  beauty  of  features  ;  and  not  without 
reason,  for  beautiful  features,  being  a  lucky  inheritance,  may  be 
conjoined  with  unamiable  individual  traits,  whereas  beautiful  ex- 
pression is  the  infallible  index  of  a  beautiful  mind  and  character ; 
and  promises,  moreover,  beautiful  sons  and  daughters,  because 
"  expression  is  feature  in  the  making."  It  is  by  such  subtle  signs 
and  promises  that  Love  is  unconsciously  and  instinctively  guided 
in  its  choice. 

Formal  Beauty  alone  is  external  and  cold.  It  is  those  slight 
variations  in  Beauty  and  expression  which  we  call  individuality 
and  character  that  excite  emotion :  so  much  so  that  Love,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  dependent  on  individuality,  and  a  man  who  warmly 
admires  all  beautiful  women  is  in  love  with  none. 

Speaking  of  the  Greeks,  Sir  Charles  Bell  says  :  "  In  high  art 
it  appears  to  have  been  the  rule  of  the  sculptor  to  divest  the  form, 
of  expression.  ...  In  the  Venus,  the  form  is  exquisite  and  the 
face  perfect,  but  there  is  no  expression  there ;  it  has  no  human 
softness,  nothing  to  love"  " All  individuality  was  studiously 
avoided  by  the  ancient  sculptors  in  the  representation  of  divinity ; 
they  maintained  the  beauty  of  form  and  proportion,  but  without  ex- 
pression, which,  in  their  system,  belonged  exclusively  to  hu inanity." 

But  inasmuch  as  the  Greeks  attributed  to  their  deities  all  the 
various  emotions  which  agitate  man,  why  did  they  refuse  them  th<» 
signs  of  expression  ?  One  cannot  but  suspect  that  the  Greeks  did 
not  sufficiently  appreciate  the  beauty  of  expression.  Had  they 
valued  it  more  they  would  not  have  allowed  their  women  to  vege- 
tate in  ignorance  like  flowers,  one  like  the  other,  but  would  have 
educated  them  and  given  them  the  individuality  and  expression 
which  alone  can  inspire  Love. 

Again,  if  the  Greeks  had  been  susceptible  to  the  superior  charms 
of  emotional  expression,  is  it  likely  that  they  would  have  been  so 
completely  absorbed  in  the  two  least  expressive  and  emotional  of 
the  arts — architecture  and  sculpture  1 

We  cannot  avoid  the  conclusion  that  the  Greeks  were  as  indif- 
ferent to  the  charms  of  individual  expression  as  to  Romantic  Love, 
which  is  dependent  on  it.  In  their  statues,  as  Dr.  Max  Sehasler 
remarks,  a  mouth  or  eye  has  no  more  significance  as  a  mark  of 
beauty  than  a  well -shaped  leg.  Whereas  in  modern,  and  even 
sometimes  in  mediaeval  art,  what  a  world  of  expression  in  a  mouth, 
a  pair  of  eyes  ! 

Leaving  individual  exceptions  (like  Homer)  aside,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  arts  have  been  successively  developed  to  a  climax  in 
the  order  of  their  capacity  for  emotional  expression,  viz. — Archi- 


350  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

tecture,  Sculpture,  Painting,  Poetry,  and  Music.  Poetry  precedes 
music,  because  though  its  emotional  scope  is  wider,  it  is  less 
intense.  To-day  music  is  the  most  popular  and  universal  of  all 
the  arts  because  it  stirs  most  deeply  our  feelings.  And  just  as  the 
discovery  of  harmony,  by  individualising  the  melodies,  has  increased 
the  power  and  variety  of  music  a  thousandfold ;  so  the  individuali- 
sation  of  Beauty  and  character  through  modern  culture  has  made 
Romantic  Love  a  blessing  accessible  to  all — the  most  prevalent 
form  of  modern  affection. 

Individuality  is  of  such  extreme  importance  in  Love  that  a 
slight  blemish  is  not  only  pardoned  but  actually  adored  if  it  in- 
creases the  individuality.  Bacon  evidently  had  this  in  his  mind 
when  he  said  that  "  there  is  no  excellent  beauty  which  has  not  some 
strangeness  in  its  proportion."  Seneca,  as  well  as  Ovid,  noted  the 
attractiveness  of  slight  short-comings ;  and  the  following  anecdote 
shows  that  though  the  Persians,  as  a  nation,  have  ever  been 
strangers  to  Romantic  Love,  their  greatest  poet,  Hafiz,  understood 
the  psychology  of  the  subject  in  its  subtlest  details : — 

"  One  day  Timur  (fourteenth  century)  sent  for  Hafiz  and  asked 
angrily :  *  Art  thou  he  who  was  so  bold  as  to  offer  my  two  great 
cities  Samarkand  and  Bokhara  for  the  black  mole  on  thy  mistress's 
cheek  ? '  alluding  to  a  well-known  verse  in  one  of  his  odes.  '  Yes, 
sire,'  replied  Hafiz,  '  and  it  is  by  such  acts  of  generosity  that  I 
have  brought  myself  to  such  a  state  of  destitution  that  I  have  now 
to  solicit  your  bounty.'  Timur  was  so  pleased  with  the  ready  wit 
displayed  in  this  answer  that  he  dismissed  the  poet  with  a  hand- 
some present." 

To  sum  up :  the  reason  why 

"  The  rose  that  lives  its  little  hour 
Is  prized  beyond  the  sculptured  flower  " 

is  not,  as  Bryant  implies,  the  transitoriness  of  the  rose,  but  the  fact 
that  the  marble  flower,  like  the  wax-flower,  is  dead  and  unchange- 
able, while  the  short-lived  rose  beams  with  the  expression  of  happy 
vitality  after  a  shower,  or  sadly  droops  and  hangs  its  head  in  a 
drouth.  It  has  life  and  expression,  subtle  gradations  of  colour, 
and  light  and  shade,  which  are  the  signs  of  its  vitality  and  moods, 
varying  every  day,  every  hour.  And  so  with  all  the  higher  forms 
of  life,  those  always  being  most  beautiful  and  highly  prized  which 
are  most  capable  of  expressing  subtle  variations  of  health,  happi- 
ness, and  mental  refinement. 

There  is  no  part  of  the  human  body  which  does  not  serve  as  a 
mark  of  expression — • 


THE  FEET  861 

"  In  many's  looks  the  false  heart's  history 
Is  writ  in  moods  and  frowns  and  wrinkles  strange." 

"  There's  language  in  her  eye,  her  cheek,  her  lip, 
Nay,  her  foot  speaks." — SHAKSPERE. 

It  will  not  do,  therefore,  to  neglect  any  part  of  the  body.  As  it 
is  the  last  straw  which  breaks  the  camel's  back,  so  Cupid's  capri- 
cious choice  is  often  determined  by  some  minor  point  of  perfection, 
when  the  balance  is  otherwise  equal.  Suppose  there  are  two  sisters 
whose  faces,  figures,  and  mental  attractions  are  about  equal ;  then 
it  is  possible  that  one  of  them  will  die  an  old  maid  simply  because 
the  other  had  a  smaller  foot,  a  more  graceful  gait,  or  longer  eye- 
lashes. 

But  though  every  organ  has  its  own  beauty,  there  is  an  aesthetic 
scale  of  lower  and  higher  which  corresponds  pretty  accurately  with 
the  physical  scale  from  down  upwards — from  the  foot  to  the  eye  and 
forehead.  It  is  in  this  order,  accordingly,  that  we  shall  now  pro- 
ceed to  consider  the  various  parts  of  the  human  form,  and  those 
peculiarities  in  them  which  are  considered  most  beautiful  and  most 
liable  to  inspire  Romantic  Love. 


THE  FEET 

SIZE 

There  is  hardly  anything  concerning  which  vain  people  are  so 
sensitive  as  their  feet.  To  have  large  feet  is  considered  one  of  the 
greatest  misfortunes  that  can  befall  a  woman.  Mathematically 
stated,  the  length  of  a  woman's  skirts  is  directly  proportional  to 
the  size  of  her  feet ;  and  women  with  large  feet  are  always  shocked 
at  the  frivolity  of  those  who  have  neat  ankles  and  coquettishly 
allow  them  to  be  seen  on  occasion ;  nor  do  they  see  any  beauty  in 
Sir  John  Suckling's  lines — 

"  Her  feet  beneath  her  petticoat 
Like  little  mice  stole  in  and  out, 
As  if  they  feared  the  light." 

Nor  are  men,  as  a  rule,  sufficiently  free  from  pedal  vanity  to  pose 
as  satirists.  Byron  found  a  mark  of  aristocracy  in  small  feet,  and 
he  was  rendered  almost  as  miserable  by  the  morbid  consciousness 
of  his  own  defects  as  Mme.  de  Stael  (who  had  very  ugly  feet,  yet 
once  ventured  to  assume  the  rdle,  in  private  theatricals,  of  a  statue) 
was  offended  by  Talleyrand's  witticism,  that  he  recognised  her  by 
the  pied  de  Stael. 


852  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

There  is  a  ben  trovato,  if  not  true,  story  of  a  clever  wife  who 
objected  to  her  husband's  habit  of  spending  his  evenings  away  from 
home,  and  who  reformed  him  by  utilising  his  vanity.  By  insisting 
that  his  boots  were  too  large,  she  repeatedly  induced  him  to  buy 
smaller  ones,  which  finally  tortured  him  so  much  that  he  was  only 
too  glad  to  stay  at  home  and  wear  his  slippers. 


FASHIONABLE   UGLINESS 

How  universal  is  the  desire  to  have,  or  appear  to  have,  small 
feet  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  everybody  blackens  his  shoes  or 
boots;  for,  owing  to  a  peculiar  optical  delusion,  black  objects 
always  appear  smaller  than  white  ones ;  which  is  also  the  reason 
why  too  slim  and  delicate  ladies  never  appear  to  such  advantage  in 
winter  as  they  do  in  summer,  when  they  exchange  their  dark  for 
light  dresses. 

To  a  certain  point  the  admiration  of  small  feet  is  in  accordance 
with  the  canons  of  good  Taste,  as  will  be  presently  shown.  But 
Taste  has  a  disease  which  is  called  Fashion.  It  is  a  sort  of 
microbe  which  has  the  effect  of  distorting  and  exaggerating  every- 
thing it  takes  hold  of.  Fashion  is  not  satisfied  with  small  feet ; 
it  wants  them  very  small,  unnaturally  small,  at  the  cost  of  beauty, 
health,  grace,  comfort,  and  happiness.  Hence  for  many  genera- 
tions shoemakers  have  been  compelled  to  manufacture  instruments 
of  torture  so  ruinous  to  the  constitution  of  man  and  woman,  that 
an  Austrian  military  surgeon  has  seriously  counselled  the  enact- 
ment of  legal  fines  to  be  imposed  on  the  makers  of  noxiously- 
shaped  shoes,  similar  to  those  imposed  on  food-adulterators. 

Most  ugly  and  vulgar  fashions  come  from  France ;  but  as  re- 
gards crippled  feet  the  first  prize  has  to  be  yielded  to  the  Chinese, 
even  by  the  Parisians.  The  normal  size  of  the  human  foot  varies, 
for  men,  from  9J  to  13 ;  for  women,  from  5^  to  9  inches,  man's 
feet  being  longer  proportionately  to  the  greater  length  of  his  lower 
limbs.  In  China  the  men  value  the  normal  healthy  condition  of 
their  own  feet  enough  to  have  introduced  certain  features  of  elas- 
ticity in  their  shoes  which  we  might  copy  with  advantage ;  but  the 
women  are  treated  very  differently.  "  The  fashionable  length  for 
a  Chinese  foot,"  says  Dr.  Jamieson,  "  is  between  3  J  and  4  inches, 
but  comparatively  few  parents  succeed  in  arresting  growth  so  com- 
pletely." "When  girls  are  five  years  old  their  feet  are  tightly 
wrapped  up  in  bandages,  which  on  successive  occasions  are  tightened 
more  and  more,  till  the  surface  ulcerates,  and  some  of  the  flesh, 
skin,  and  sometimes  even  a  toe  or  two  come  off.  "  During  the  first 


THE  FEET  553 

year,"  says  Professor  Flower,  "the  pain  is  so  intense  that  the 
sufferer  can  do  nothing  but  lie  and  cry  and  moan.  For  about  two 
years  the  foot  aches  continually,  aud  is  subject  to  a  constant  pain, 
like  the  pricking  of  sharp  needles."  Finally  the  foot  becomes 
reduced  to  a  shapeless  mass,  void  of  sensibility,  which  "  has  now 
the  appearance  of  the  hoof  of  some  animal  rather  than  a  human 
foot,  and  affords  a  very  insufficient  organ  of  support,  as  the  peculiar 
tottering  gait  of  those  possessing  it  clearly  shows." 

The  difference  between  the  Chinese  belle  and  the  Parisian  is 
one  of  degree  merely.  The  former  has  her  torturing  done  once 
for  all  while  a  child,  whereas  the  latter  allows  her  tight,  high- 
heeled  shoes  to  torture  her  throughout  life.  The  English  are  the 
only  nation  that  have  recognised  the  injuriousness  and  vulgarity  of 
the  French  shoe,  and  subsntuted  one  made  on  hygienic  principles ; 
and  as  England  has  in  almost  everything  else  displaced  France  as 
the  leader  in  modern  fashion,  it  is  reasonable  to  hope  that  ere 
long  other  nations  will  follow  her  in  this  reform.  American  girls 
are,  as  a  rule,  much  less  sensible  in  this  matter  than  their  English 
sisters ;  one  need  only  ask  a  clerk  in  a  shoe  store  to  find  out 
how  most  of  them  endeavour  to  squeeze  their  small  feet  into 
shoes  too  small  by  a  number. 

Fashions  are  always  followed  blindly,  without  deliberation. 
But  would  it  not  be  worth  while  for  French,  American,  and  Ger- 
man women — and  many  men  too — to  ask  themselves  what  they 
gain  and  what  they  lose  by  trying  to  make  their  feet  appear 
smaller  than  they  are  1  The  disadvantages  outweigh  the  advan- 
tages to  an  almost  ludicrous  extent. 

On  the  one  side  there  in  absolutely  nothing  but  the  gratifica- 
tion of  vanity  derived  from  the  fact  that  a  few  acquaintances 
admire  one's  "  pretty  feet " ;  and  even  this  advantage  is  problem- 
atical, because  a  person  who  wears  too  tight  shoes  can  hardly 
conceal  them  from  an  observer,  and  is  therefore  apt  to  get  pity 
for  her  vain  weakness  in  place  of  admiration. 

On  the  other  hand  are  the  following  disadvantages  : — 

(1)  The  constant  torture  of  pressure  (not  to  mention  the  result- 
ing corns  and  bunions),  which  alone  must  surely  outweigh  a  hundred 
times  the  pleasure  of  gratified  vanity  at  having  a  Chinese  foot. 

(2)  The  unconscious  distortion  of  the  features  and  furrowing  of 
the  forehead  in  the  effort  to  endure  and  repress  the  pain, — and 
wrinkles,  be  it  remembered,  when  once  formed  are  ineradicable. 

(3)  Tho  discouragement  of  walking  and  other  exercise,  involv- 
ing a  general  lowering  of  vitality,  sickly  pallor  and  premature  loss 
of  "the  bloom  of  youth. 


354  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

(4)  The  wasting  of  the  calf  of  the  leg  to  dimensions  character- 
istic of  savagedom,  disease,  and  old  age,  not  to  speak  of  the 
numerous  maladies  resulting  to  women  from  the  use  of  hard  high 
heels  of  fashionable  shoes,  every  contact  of  which  with  the  ground 
sends  a  shock  through  the  spinal  column  to  the  brain  and  produce* 
obscure  disorders  in  various  parts  of  the  organism. 

(5)  The   mutilation  of  one  of  the  most  beautiful   and  char- 
acteristically human  parts  of  the  body.     As  the  author  of  Harper's 
Ugly  Girl  Papers  remarks  :  "  One's  foot  is  as  proper  an  object  of 
pride   and   complacency  as   a  shapely  hand.      But  where  in  a 
thousand  would  a  sculptor  find  one  that  was  a  pleasure  to  contem- 
plate like  that  of  the  Princess  Pauline  Bonaparte,  whose  lovely  foot 
was  modelled  in  marble  for  the  delight  of  all  the  world  who  have 
seen  it  ? " 

(6)  Finally,  and  most  important  of  all,  the  loss  of  a  graceful 
gait,  of  the  poetry  of  motion,  which  is  a  thousand  times  more 
calculated  to  inspire  admiration — aesthetic  or  erotic — than  a  small 
foot. 

Man  is  said  to  be  a  reasoning  animal;  and  man  embraces 
woman.  But  surely  in  matters  of  fashion  woman  i ;  not  a  reason- 
ing being.  Very  large  feet  being  properly  regarded  as  ugly,  she 
draws  the  inference  that  the  smaller  they  can  be  made  the  more 
will  they  be  beautiful ;  forgetting  that  Beauty  is  a  matter  of  pro- 
portion, not  of  absolute  size.  A  foot  may,  like  a  waist,  as  easily 
appear  ugly  from  being  too  small  as  from  being  too  large.  A  large 
woman  with  very  small  feet  cannot  but  make  a  disagreeable  im- 
pression, like  a  bust  on  an  insecure  pedestal  or  a  leaning  tower. 

TESTS   OF   BEAUTY 

According  to  Schopenhauer,  the  great  value  which  all  attach  to 
small  feet  "  depends  on  the  fact  that  small  feet  are  an  essentially 
human  characteristic,  since  in  no  animal  are  the  tarsus  and  meta- 
tarsus together  so  small  as  in  man,  which  peculiarity  is  connected 
with  his  erect  attitude  :  he  is  a  plantigrade."  But  it  is  difficult  to 
see  any  force  in  this  reasoning,  since  not  one  person  in  a  hundred 
thousand  knows  what  the  bones  called  tarsus  and  metatarsus  are, 
nor  cares  whether  they  are  larger  in  man  or  in  animals ;  while,  as 
regards  the  upright  position,  large  feet  would  appear  more  suitable 
for  maintaining  it  than  small  ones. 

If  smallness  were  the  test  of  beauty  in  man,  why  should  we 
not  feel  ashamed  to  have  larger  heads  than  animals,  or  envy  the 
elephant,  who,  for  his  size,  has  the  smallest  foot  of  all  animals  1 


THE  FEET  855 

Those  who  believe  that  human  beauty  consists  in  the  degree 
of  remoteness  from  animal  types,  will  derive  satisfaction  from  the 
fact  that  apes  have  feet  that  are  larger  than  ours.  Topinard  gives 
these  figures  showing  the  relative  sizes:  man,  16 '9 6;  gorilla, 
20'69;  chimpanzee,  21-00;  orang,  25.  But  why  should  man 
feel  a  special  pride  in  the  fact  that  his  feet  are  somewhat  smaller 
than  those  of  his  nearest  relatives,  whom,  until  recently,  he  did 
not  even  acknowledge  as  such  ? 

It  is,  moreover,  unscientific  to  compare  man's  foot  with  the  ape's 
too  closely,  because  they  have  different  functions — being  used  by 
man  for  walking,  by  the  ape  for  climbing — and  therefore  require 
different  characteristics.  It  is  only  in  those  organs  that  have  a 
like  function — as  the  jaws,  teeth,  nose,  eyes,  and  forehead — that  a 
direct  comparison  is  permissible,  and  a  progress  noted  in  our 
favour. 

Again,  as  M.  Topinard  tells  us,  "  The  hand  and  the  foot  of 
man,  although  shorter  than  those  of  the  anthropoid  ape,  do  not. 
vary  among  races  according  to  their  order  of  superiority,  as  we 
should  have  supposed.  A  long  hand  or  foot  is  not  a  diaracteristic 
of  inferiority" 

The  same  is  true  among  individuals  of  the  same  race.  Mme. 
de  Stael  was  one  of  the  most  intelligent  women  the  world  has  ever 
seen,  yet  her  feet  were  very  large ;  and  conversely,  some  of  our 
silliest  girls  have  the  smallest  feet. 

Since,  then,  there  is  no  obvious  connection  between  small  feet 
and  superior  culture,  it  follows  that  the  beauty  of  a  foot  is  not  to 
be  determined  by  so  simple  a  matter  as  its  length.  There  are  other 
peculiarities,  of  greater  importance,  in  which  the  laws  of  Beauty 
manifest  themselves.  First,  in  the  arched  instep,  which  is  not 
only  attractive  because  it  introduces  the  beauty-curve  in  place  of 
the  straight,  flat  line  of  the  sole,  but  which  is  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance in  increasing  the  foot's  capacity  for  carrying  its  burden, 
just  as  architects  build  arches  under  bridges,  etc.,  for  the  sake  of 
the  greater  strength  and  more  equable  distribution  of  pressure  thus 
obtained.  Secondly,  in  the  symmetrical  correspondence  of  the  toes 
and  contours  of  one  foot  with  those  of  its  partner ;  in  the  gradation 
->f  the  regularly  shortened  toes,  from  the  first  to  the  fifth ;  in  the 
delicate  tints  of  the  skin  which,  moreover,  is  smooth  and  not  (as 
in  apes)  covered  with  straggling  hairs  and  deep  furrows,  which 
would  have  concealed  the  delicate  veins  that  variegate  the  surface, 
and  give  it  the  colour  of  life. 

Professor  Carl  Vogt,  in  his  Lectures  on  Man,  vividly  illustrates 
the  principles  on  which  our  judgment  regarding  beauty  in  feet  is 


856  BOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

based,  by  comparing  a  negro's  foot  with  that  of  civilised  man : 
"  The  foot  of  the  negro,  says  Burineister,  produces  a  disagreeable 
impression.  Everything  in  it  is  ugly ;  the  flatness,  the  projecting 
heel,  the  thick,  fatty  cushion  in  the  inner  cavity,  the  spreading 
toes.  .  .  .  The  character  of  the  human  foot  lies  mainly  in  its 
arched  structure,  in  the  predominance  of  the  metatarsus,  the 
shortening  and  equal  direction  of  the  toes,  among  which  the  great 
toe  is  remarkably  long,  but  not,  like  the  thumb,  opposable.  .  .  . 
The  toes  in  standing  leave  no  mark,  but  do  so  in  progression. 
The  whole  middle  part  of  the  foot  does  not  touch  the  ground. 
Persons  with  flat  feet,  in  whom  the  middle  of  the  sole  touches 
ground,  are  bad  pedestrians,  and  are  rejected  as  recruits.  .  .  . 
The  negro  is  a  decided  flat  foot  .  .  .  the  fat  cushion  on  the  sole 
not  only  fills  up  the  whole  cavity,  but  projects  beyond  the  sur- 
face." 

Inasmuch  as  it  is  the  custom  among  all  civilised  peoples  to 
cover  the  foot  entirely,  many  of  its  aspects  of  beauty  are  rendered 
invisible  permanently,  so  that  it  is  perhaps  not  to  be  wondered  at 
that  in  their  absence  Fashion  should  have  so  eagerly  fixed  on  the 
two  visible  features — size  and  arched  instep — and  endeavoured  to 
exaggerate  them  by  Procrustean  dimensions  and  stilt -like  high 
heels.  Yet  in  this  matter  even  modern  Parisians  represent  a 
progress  over  the  mediaeval  Venetian  ladies,  who,  according  to 
Marinello,  at  one  time  wore  soles  and  heels  over  a  foot  in  height, 
so  that  on  going  out  they  had  to  be  accompanied  by  several 
servants  to  prevent  them  from  falling.  Mais  que  voulez  vous? 
Fashion  is  fashion,  and  women  are  women. 

By  the  ancient  Greeks  the  feet  were  frequently  exposed  to 
view;  hence,  says  Winckelmann,  "in  descriptions  of  beautiful 
persons,  as  Polyxena  and  Aspasia,  even  their  beautiful  feet  are 
mentioned."  Possibly  in  some  future  age,  when  Health  and 
Beauty  will  be  more  worshipped  than  vulgar  Fashion  fetishes,  a 
clever  Yankee  will  invent  an  elastic,  tough,  and  leathery,  but 
transparent  substance  that  will  protect  the  foot  while  fitting  it 
like  a  glove  u^a  showing  its  outlines.  This  would  put  an  end  to 
the  mutilations  resorted  to  from  vanity,  guided  by  bad  taste,  and 
would  add  one  more  feature  to  Personal  Beauty.  And  the  foot, 
as  Burmeister  insists,  has  one  advantage  over  every  other  part  of 
the  body.  Beauty  in  all  these  other  features  depends  on  health 
and  a  certain  muscular  roundness.  But  the  foot's  beauty  is 
independent  of  such  variations,  as  it  lies  mainly  in  its  permanent 
bony  contours  and  in  its  fat  cushion,  which  alone  of  all  adipose 
layers  resists  the  ravages  of  disease  and  old  age.  Hence  a 


THE  FEET  857 

beautiful  foot  is  a  thing  of  beauty  and  a  joy  for  ever,  long  after 
all  other  youthful  charms  have  faded  and  fled. 

A  GRACEFUL   GAIT 

So  long  as  the  foot  remains  entirely  covered,  its  beauty  is,  on 
the  whole,  of  less  importance  than  the  grace  of  its  movements. 
Grace,  under  all  circumstances,  is  as  potent  a  love-charm  as 
Beauty  itself — of  which,  in  fact,  it  is  only  a  phase  ;  and  if  young 
men  and  women  could  be  made  to  realise  how  much  they  could 
add  to  their  fascinations  by  cultivating  a  graceful  gait  and 
attitudes,  hygienic  shoemakers,  dancing-masters,  and  gymnasiums 
would  enjoy  as  great  and  sudden  a  popularity  as  skating-rinks, 
and  a  much  more  permanent  popularity  too. 

It  is  the  laws  of  Grace  that  chiefly  determine  the  most  admir- 
able characteristics  of  the  foot.  The  arched  instep  is  beautiful 
because  of  its  curved  outlines ;  but  its  greatest  value  lies  in  the 
superior  elasticity  and  grace  it  imparts  to  the  gait.  The  habitual 
carrying  of  heavy  loads  tends  to  make  the  feet  flat  and  to  ruin 
Grace ;  hence  the  clumsy  gait  of  most  working  people,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  graceful  walk  of  the  "  aristocratic  "  classes. 

The  proper  size  of  the  foot,  again,  is  most  easily  determined 
with  reference  to  the  principles  of  Grace.  Motion  is  graceful 
when  it  does  not  involve  any  waste  of  energy,  and  when  it  is  in 
accordance  with  the  lines  of  Beauty.  There  must  be  no  dispro- 
portion between  the  machinery  and  the  work  done — no  locomotive 
to  pull  a  baby-carriage.  Too  large  feet  are  ugly  because  they 
appear  to  have  been  made  for  carrying  a  giant ;  too  small  ones 
are  ugly  because  seemingly  belonging  to  a  dwarf.  What  are  the 
exact  proportions  lying  between  "too  large"  and  "too  small "  can 
only  be  determined  by  those  who  have  educated  their  taste  by  the 
study  of  the  laws  of  Beauty  and  Grace  throughout  Nature. 

From  this  point  of  view  Grace  is  synonymous  with  functional 
fitness.  A  monkey's  foot  is  less  beautiful  than  a  man's,  but  in 
climbing  it  is  more  graceful ;  whereas  in  walking  man's  is 
infinitely  more  graceful.  Apes  rarely  assume  an  erect  position, 
and  when  they  do  so  they  never  walk  on  the  flat  sole.  "  When 
the  orang-outang  takes  to  the  ground,"  says  Mr.  E.  B.  Tylor,  "  he 
shambles  clumsily  along,  generally  putting  down  the  outer  edge  of 
the  foot  and  the  bent  knuckles  of  the  hand." 

I  have  italicised  the  word  "clumsily"  because  it  touches  the 
vital  point  of  the  question.  Man  owes  his  intellectual  superiority 
largely  to  the  fact  that  he  does  not  need  his  hands  for  walking  or 


358  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

climbing,  but  uses  them  as  organs  of  delicate  touch  and  as  took. 
To  acquire  this  independence  of  the  hands  he  needed  feet,  which 
enabled  him  to  stand  erect  and  walk  along,  not  "  clumsily,"  but 
firmly,  naturally,  and  therefore  gracefully.  Hence  in  course  of 
time,  through  the  effects  of  constant  use,  there  was  developed  the 
callous  cushion  of  the  heel  and  toes ;  while,  through  discontinu- 
ance of  the  habit  of  climbing,  the  toes  became  reduced  in  size. 
In  the  ape's  foot,  it  is  well  known,  the  toes  are  almost  as  long  as 
the  fingers  of  the  hand  :  a  fact  which  led  Blumenbach  and  Cuvier 
to  classify  apes  as  quadrumana  or  four-handed  animals.  But 
Professor  Huxley  showed  that  this  classification  was  based  on 
erroneous  reasoning.  The  resemblance  between  the  hands  and 
feet  of  apes  is  merely  physiological  or  functional — because  hands 
and  feet  are  used  alike  for  climbing.  But  anatomically,  in  its 
bones  and  muscles,  etc.,  the  monkey's  apparent  hind  "  hand  "  is  a 
true  foot  no  less  than  man's.  If  the  physiological  function,  i.e. 
the  opposability  of  the  thumb  to  the  other  fingers,  were  taken  as 
a  ground  of  classification,  then  birds,  who  have  such  toes,  would 
have  no  feet  at  all  but  only  wings  and  hands. 

There  is  a  limit,  however,  beyond  which  the  size  of  man's  toe's 
cannot  be  reduced  without  injuring  the  foot's  usefulness  and  the 
grace  of  gait.  The  front  part  of  the  foot  is  distinguished  for  its 
yielding  or  elastic  character.  Hence,  says  Professor  Humphrey, 
"in  descending  from  a  height,  as  from  a  chair  or  in  walking 
downstairs,  we  alight  upon  the  balls  of  the  toes.  If  we  alight 
upon  the  heels — for  instance,  if  we  walk  downstairs  on  the  heels 
— we  find  it  an  uncomfortable  and  rather  jarring  procedure.  In 
walking  and  jumping,  it  is  true,  the  heels  come  first  in  contact 
with  the  ground,  but  the  weight  then  falls  obliquely  upon  them, 
and  is  not  fully  borne  by  the  foot  till  the  toes  also  are  upon  the 
ground." 

One  of  the  reasons  why  Grace  is  more  rare  even  than  Beauty 
on  this  planet  is  that  the  toes  are  cramped  or  even  turned  out  of 
their  natural  position  by  tight,  pointed,  fashionable  shoes,  and 
are  thus  prevented  from  giving  elasticity  to  the  step.  Instances 
are  not  rare  (and  by  no  means  only  in  China)  where  the  great  toe 
is  almost  at  right  angles  to  the  length  of  the  foot.  In  walking, 
says  Professor  Flower,  "  the  heel  is  first  lifted  from  the  ground, 
and  the  weight  of  the  body  gradually  transferred  through  the 
middle  to  the  anterior  end  of  the  foot,  and  the  final  push  or 
impulse  given  with  the  great  toe.  It  is  necessary  then  that  all 
these  parts  should  be  in  a  straight  line  with  one  another." 

It  is  a  mooted  question  whether  the  toes  should  be  slightly 


THE  FEET  859 

turned  outward,  as  dancing-masters  insist,  or  placed  in  straight 
parallel  lines,  as  some  physiologists  hold.  For  the  reason 
indicated  in  the  last  paragraph,  physiologists  are  clearly  right. 
With  parallel  or  almost  parallel  great  toes,  a  graceful  walk  is 
more  easily  attained  than  by  turning  out  the  toes.  Even  in 
standing,  Dr.  T.  S.  Ellis  argues,  the  parallel  position  is  preferable  : 
"  When  a  body  stands  on  four  points  I  know  of  no  reason  why  it 
should  stand  more  firmly  if  those  points  be  unequally  disposed. 
The  tendency  to  fall  forwards  would  seem  to  be  even  increased  by 
widening  the  distance  between  the  points  in  front,  and  it  is  in 
this  direction  that  falls  most  commonly  occur." 

EVOLUTION   OP  THE   GREAT   TOE 

Perhaps  the  most  striking  difference  between  the  feet  of  men 
and  apes  lies  in  the  relative  size  of  the  first  and  second  toes.  In 
the  ape's  foot  the  second  toe  is  longer  than  the  first,  whereas  in 
modern  civilised  man's  foot  the  first  or  great  toe  is  almost  always 
the  longer.  Not  so,  however,  with  savages,  who  are  intermediate 
in  this  as  in  other  respects  between  man  and  ape ;  and  there  are 
various  other  facts  which  seem  to  indicate  that  the  evolution  of 
the  great  toe,  like  that  of  the  other  extreme  of  the  body — the 
head  and  brain — is  still  in  progress. 

There  is  a  notion  very  prevalent  among  artists  that  the  second 
toe  should  be  longer  than  the  first.  This  idea,  Professor  Flower 
thinks,  is  derived  from  the  Greek  canon,  which  in  its  turn  was 
copied  from  the  Egyptian,  and  probably  originally  derived  from 
the  negro.  It  certainly  does  not  represent  what  is  most  usual  in 
our  race  and  time.  "Among  hundreds  of  bare,  and  therefore 
undeformed,  feet  of  children  I  lately  examined  in  Perthshire,  I 
was  not  able  to  find  one  in  which  the  second  toe  was  the  longest. 
Since  in  all  apes — in  fact,  in  all  other  animals — the  first  toe  is 
considerably  shorter  than  the  second,  a  long  first  toe  is  a  specially 
human  attribute;  and  instead  of  being  despised  by  artists,  it 
should  be  looked  upon  as  a  mark  of  elevation  in  the  scale  of 
organised  beings." 

Mr.  J.  P.  Harrison,  after  a  careful  examination  of  the  unrestored 
feet  of  Greek  and  Roman  statues  in  various  museums  and  art 
galleries,  wrote  an  article  in  the  Journal  of  the  Anthropological 
Institute  of  Great  Britain  (vol.  xiii.  1884),  in  which  he  states  that 
he  was  "  led  to  the  conviction  that  it  was  from  Italy  and  not 
Greece  that  the  long  second  toe  affected  by  many  English  artists 
had  been  imported."  Among  the  Italians  a  longer  second  toe  IB 


360  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

common,  as  also  among  Alsatians ;  in  England  so  rarely  that  its 
occurrence  probably  indicates  foreign  blood.  Professor  Flower,  as 
we  have  seen,  found  no  cases  at  all ;  Paget  examined  twenty-seven 
EngMsh  males,  in  twenty-four  of  whom  the  great  toe  was  the  longer. 
"  In  the  case  of  the  female  feet,  in  ten  out  of  twenty-three  subjects 
the  first  or  great  toe  was  longest,  and  in  ten  females  it  was 
shorter  than  the  second  toe.  In  the  remaining  three  instances  the 
first  and  second  toes  were  of  equal  length." 

Bear  these  last  sentences  in  mind  a  moment,  till  we  have  seen 
what  is  the  case  with  savages.  Says  Dr.  Bruner :  "A  slight 
shortening  of  the  great  toe  undoubtedly  exists,  not  merely  amongst 
the  Negro  tribes,  but  also  in  ancient  and  modern  Egyptians,  and  even 
in  some  of  the  most  beautiful  races  of  Caucasian  females"  And  Mr. 
Harrison  found  this  to  be,  with  a  few  exceptions,  a  general  trait  of 
savages.  The  great  toe  was  shorter  than  the  second  in  skeletons 
of  Peruvians,  Tahitians,  New  Hebrideans,  Savage  islanders,  Amos, 
New  Caledonians. 

Must  we  therefore  agree  with  Carl  Vogt  when  he  says,  "We 
may  be  sure  that,  whenever  we  perceive  an  approach  to  the  animal 
type,  the  female  is  nearer  to  it  than  the  male"? 

Perhaps,  however,  we  can  find  a  solution  of  the  problem  some- 
what less  insulting  to  women  than  this  statement  of  the  ungallant 
German  professor. 

It  is  Fashion,  the  handmaid  of  ugliness,  that  has  thus  ap- 
parently caused  almost  half  the  women  to  approximate  the  simian 
type  of  the  foot ;  Fashion,  which,  by  inducing  women  for  centuries 
to  thrust  their  tender  feet  into  Spanish  boots  of  torture,  has  taken 
from  their  toes  the  freedom  of  action  requisite  for  that  free  develop- 
ment and  growth  which  is  to  be  noticed  in  almost  all  the  men. 

Considering  the  great  difference  between  the  left  and  the  right 
foot,  it  appears  almost  incredible,  but  is  a  sober  fact,  that  until 
about  half  a  century  ago  "  rights  and  lefts  "  were  not  made  even 
for  the  men,  who  now  always  wear  them.  But  even  to-day  "  they 
are  not,  it  is  believed,  made  use  of  by  women,  except  in  a  shape 
that  is  little  efficacious,"  says  Mr.  Harrison ;  and  concerning  the 
Austrians  Dr.  Schaffer  remarks,  similarly,  that  "  the  like  shoe  for 
the  left  and  right  foot  is  still  in  use  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases." 
No  wonder  women  are  so  averse  to  taking  exercise,  and  therefore 
lose  their  beauty  at  a  time  when  it  ought  to  be  still  in  full  bloom. 
For  to  walk  in  such  shoes  must  be  a  torture  forbidding  all  unneces- 
sary movement. 

Once  more  be  it  said — it  is  Fashion,  the  handmaid  of  ugliness, 
that  is  responsible  for  the  inferior  beauty  of  the  average  female 


THE  FEET  361 

foot,  by  preventing  the  free  development  and  play  of  the  toes 
which  are  absolutely  necessary  for  a  graceful  walk. 

To  what  an  extent  the  woful  rarity  of  a  graceful  gait  is  due  to 
the  shape  of  "  fashionable  "  shoes  is  vividly  brought  out  in  a  passage 
concerning  the  natives  of  Martinique,  which  appeared  in  a  letter  in 
the  New  York  Evening  Post:  "Many  of  the  quadroons  are  hand- 
some, even  beautiful,  in  their  youth,  and  all  the  women  of  pure 
black  and  mixed  blood  walk  with  a  lightness  of  step  and  a  graceful 
freedom  of  motion  that  is  very  noticeable  and  pleasant  to  see.  I 
say  all  the  women ;  but  I  must  confine  this  description  to  those 
who  go  shoeless,  for  when  a  negress  crams  her  feet  into  even  the 
best-fitting  pair  of  shoes  her  gait  becomes  as  awkward  as  the 
waddle  of  an  Indian  squaw,  or  of  a  black  swan  on  dry  land,  and  she 
minces  and  totters  in  such  danger  of  falling  forward  that  one  feels 
constrained  to  go  to  her  and  say,  '  Mam'selle  Ebene  or  Noirette,  do, 
I  beseech  you,  put  your  shoes  where  you  carry  everything  else, 
namely,  on  the  top  of  your  well-balanced  head,  and  do  let  me  see 
you  walk  barefoot  again,  for  I  do  assure  you  that  neither  your 
Chinese  cousins  nor  your  European  mistresses  can  ever  hope  to 
imitate  your  goddess-like  gait  until  they  practise  the  art  of  walk- 
ing with  their  high-heeled,  tiny  boots  nicely  balanced  on  their 
heads,  as  you  so  often  are  pleased  to  do.'" 

There  is  another  lesson  to  be  learned  from  this  discussion, 
namely,  that  in  trying  to  establish  the  principles  of  Beauty,  it  is 
better  to  follow  one's  own  taste  than  adhere  blindly  to  Greek 
canons,  and  what  are  supposed  to  be  Greek  canons.  The 
longer  second  toe,  as  we  have  seen,  is  not  a  characteristic  of 
Greek  art,  but  due  apparently  to  restorations  made  in  Italy 
where  this  peculiarity  prevails.  The  Greeks,  indeed,  never 
hesitated  to  idealise  and  improve  Nature  if  caught  napping; 
and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  if  in  their  own  feet  the  first  toe 
had  been  shorter  than  the  second,  they  would  have  made  it  longer 
all  the  same  in  their  statues,  following  the  laws  of  gradation  and 
curvature  which  a  longer  second  toe  would  interrupt.  For  it  is 
undeniable  that,  as  Mr.  Harrison  remarks,  "  a  model  foot,  accord- 
ing to  Flaxmau,  is  one  in  which  the  toes  follow  each  other  imper- 
ceptibly in  a  graceful  curve  from  the  first  or  great  toe  to  the  fifth." 

NATIONAL   DIFFERENCES 

The  statement  made  above  regarding  the  prevalence  among 
Italians  of  a  longer  second  toe  enables  us  also  to  qualify  the 
remark  made  in  the  Westminster  fieview  (1884),  that  "Even 
at  the  present  day  it  is  a  fact  well  known  to  all  sculptors  that 


362  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Italy  possesses  the  finest  models  as  regards  the  female  hands  and 
feet  in  any  part  of  Europe ;  and  that  to  the  eye  of  an  Italian  the 
wrists  and  ankles  of  most  English  women  would  not  serve  as  a 
study  even  for  those  revivalisms  of  the  antique  which  are  to  be 
purchased  in  our  streets  for  a  few  shillings."  Whatever  may  be 
true  of  wrists  and  ankles,  the  toes  must  be  excepted,  at  least  if  a 
larger  percentage  of  Italian  than  of  English  women  have  the  second 
toe  longer. 

Although  in  matters  where  so  many  individual  differences  exist 
it  is  hazardous  to  generalise,  the  following  remarks  on  national 
peculiarities  in  feet,  made  by  a  reviewer  of  Zachariae's  Diseases  of 
the  Human  Foot,  may  be  cited  for  what  they  are  worth :  "  The 
French  foot  is  meagre,  narrow,  and  bony;  the  Spanish  foot  is 
small  and  elegantly  curved,  thanks  to  its  Moorish  blood,  .  .  .  The 
Arab  foot  is  proverbial  for  its  high  arch ;  '  a  stream  can  run  under 
his  foot,'  is  a  description  of  its  form.  The  foot  of  the  Scotch  is 
large  and  thick — that  of  the  Irish  flat  and  square — the  English 
short  and  fleshy.  The  American  foot  is  apt  to  be  disproportionately 
small" 

BEAUTIFYING  HYGIENE 

Walking,  running,  and  dancing  are  the  most  potent  cosmetics 
for  producing  a  foot  beautiful  in  form  and  graceful  in  movement. 
It  is  possible  that  much  walking  does  slightly  increase  the  size  of 
the  foot,  but  not  enough  to  become  perceptible  in  the  life  of  an 
individual ;  and  it  has  been  sufficiently  shown  that  the  standard  of 
Beauty  in  a  foot  is  not  smallness  but  curved  outlines,  litheness,  and 
grace  of  gait,  these  qualities  being  a  thousand  times  more  powerful 
"love-charms"  than  the  smallest  Chinese  foot.  Moreover,  it  is 
probable  that  graceful  walking  has  no  tendency  to  enlarge  the  foot 
as  a  whole,  but  only  the  great  toe ;  and  a  well-developed  great  toe 
is  a  distinctive  sign  of  higher  evolution. 

It  is  useless  for  any  one  to  try  to  walk  or  dance  gracefully  in 
shoes  which  do  not  allow  the  toes  to  spread  and  act  like  two  sets 
of  elastic  springs.  One  of  the  most  curious  aberrations  of  modern 
taste  is  the  notion  that  the  shape  of  the  natural  foot  is  not  beau- 
tiful— that  it  will  look  better  if  made  narrowest  in  front  instead 
of  widest.  Even  were  this  so,  it  would  not  pay  to  sacrifice  all 
grace  to  a  slight  gain  in  Beauty.  But  it  is  not  so.  It  is  only 
habit,  which  blunts  perception,  that  makes  us  indifferent  to  the 
ugliness  of  the  pointed  shoes  in  our  shop-windows,  or  even  in  many 
cases  prefer  them  to  naturally-shaped  shoes.  Were  we  once  accus- 
tomed to  properly-shaped  hygienic  boots,  iu  which  no  part  of  the 


THE  FEET  363 

foot  is  cramped,  our  present  shoes,  with  their  unnatural  curves 
where  there  should  be  none,  and  the  absence  of  curves  where  they 
should  be  ("rights  and  lefts"),  would  seem  as  "awful"  and 
"horrid"  as  the  old  crinoline  does  to  the  eyes  of  the  prer-ent 
generation.  As  Professor  Flower  remarks :  "  The  fact  that  the 
excessively  pointed,  elongated  toes  of  the  time  of  Richard  II.,  for 
instance,  were  superseded  by  the  broad,  round-toed,  almost  ele- 
phantine, but  most  comfortable  shoes  seen  in  the  portraits  of  Henry 
VIII.  and  his  contemporaries,  shows  that  there  is  nothing  in  the 
former  essential  to  the  gratification  of  the  aesthetic  instincts  of 
mankind.  Each  form  was,  doubtless,  equally  admired  hi  the  time 
of  its  prevalence." 

The  Germans  claim  that  it  was  one  of  their  countrymen,  Petrus 
Camper,  who  first  called  attention,  about  a  hundred  years  ago,  to 
another  objectionable  peculiarity  of  the  modern  shoe — its  high 
heels — ruinous  alike  to  comfort,  grace,  and  health  (a  number  of 
female  diseases  being  caused  by  them) ;  yet  they  admit  that  Cam- 
per's advice  was  hardly  heeded  by  the  Germans,  and  that  it  there- 
fore serves  them  right  that  quite  recently  the  modern  hygienic 
shoe,  with  low,  broad  heels,  has  been  introduced  in  Germany  as 
the  "English  form,"  the  English  having  proved  themselves  less 
obtuse  and  conservative  in  this  matter. 

The  heel  is,  however,  capable  of  still  further  improvement.  It 
is  not  elastic  like  the  cushion  of  the  heel,  after  which  it  should  be 
modelled ;  and  Dr.  Schaffer's  suggestion  that  an  elastic  mechanism 
should  be  introduced  in  the  heel  is  certainly  worthy  of  trial. 
Everybody  knows  how  much  more  lightly,  gracefully,  as  well  a^ 
noiselessly,  he  can  walk  in  rubbers  than  in  leather  shoes  ;  and  this 
gain  is  owing  to  the  superior  elasticity  of  the  heel  and  the  middle 
part  of  the  shoe,  covering  the  arch,  which  should  be  especially 
elastic.  It  is  pleasanter  to  walk  in  a  meadow  than  on  a  stone 
pavement ;  but  if  we  wear  soles  that  are  both  soft  and  elastic  we 
need  never  walk  on  a  hard  surface ;  for  then,  as  Dr.  Schaffer 
remarks,  "we  have  the  meadow  in  our  boots." 

As  the  left  foot  always  differs  considerably  from  the  right,  it  is 
not  sufficient  to  have  one  measure  taken.  The  fact  that  shoemakers 
do  take  but  one  measure  shows  what  clumsy  bunglers  most  of 
them  are.  As  a  rule,  it  is  easier  to  get  a  fit  from  a  large  stock  of 
ready-made  boots  than  at  a  shoemaker's. 

The  stockings,  as  well  as  the  shoes,  often  cramp  and  deform 
the  foot ;  and  Professor  Flower  suggests  that  they  should  never 
be  made  with  pointed  toes,  or  similar  forms  for  both  sides. 
Digitated  stockings,  however,  are  a  nuisance,  for  they  hamper  the 


364  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

free  and  elastic  action  of  the  toes.  Woollen  stockings  are  the  best 
both  for  summer  and  winter  use.  No  one  who  has  ever  experi- 
enced the  comfort  of  wearing  woollen  socks  (and  underclothes  in 
general),  will  ever  dream  of  reverting  to  silk,  cotton,  or  any  other 
material. 

Soaking  the  feet  in  water  in  which  a  handful  of  salt  has  been 
dissolved,  several  times  a  week,  is  an  excellent  way  of  keeping  the 
skin  in  sound  condition.  For  perfect  cleanliness  it  does  not  suffice 
to  change  the  socks  frequently.  As  the  author  of  the  Ugly  Girl 
Papers  remarks,  "The  time  will  come  when  we  wilt  find  it  as 
shocking  to  our  ideas  to  wear  out  a  pair  of  boots  without  putting 
in  new  lining  as  we  think  the  habits  of  George  the  First's  time, 
when  maids  of  honour  went  without  washing  their  faces  for  a 
week,  and  people  wore  out  their  linen  without  the  aid  of  a 
laundress. " 

DANCING  AND   GRACE 

Among  the  ancients  dancing  included  graceful  gestures  and 
poses  of  all  parts  of  the  body,  as  well  as  facial  expression.  In 
Oriental  dancing  of  the  present  day,  likewise,  graceful  movements 
of  the  arms  and  upper  part  of  the  body  play  a  more  important  role 
than  the  lower  limbs.  Modern  dancing,  on  the  contrary,  is  chiefly 
an  affair  of  the  lower  extremities.  It  is  pre-eminently  an  exercise 
of  the  toes ;  and  herein  lies  its  hygienic  and  beautifying  value,  for, 
as  we  have  seen,  grace  of  gait  depends  chiefly  on  the  firm  litheness 
and  springiness  of  the  toes,  especially  the  great  toe.  By  their 
grace  of  gait  one  can  almost  always  distinguish  persons  who  have 
enjoyed  the  privilege  of  dancing-lessons,  which  have  strengthened 
their  toes  and,  by  implication,  many  other  muscles,  not  forgetting 
those  of  the  arm,  which  has  to  hold  the  partner. 

There  are  thousands  of  young  women  who  have  no  opportunities 
for  prolonged  and  exhilarating  exercise  except  in  ballrooms.  In 
the  majority  of  cases,  unfortunately,  Fashion,  the  handmaid  of 
Ugliness  and  Disease,  frustrates  the  advantages  which  would 
result  from  dancing  by  prescribing  for  ballrooms  not  only  the 
smallest  shoes,  but  the  tightest  corsets  and  the  lowest  dresses, 
which  render  it  impossible  or  imprudent  to  breathe  fresh  air, 
without  which  exercise  is  of  no  hygienic  value,  and  may  even  be 
injurious.  But  what  are  such  trifling  sacrifices  as  Health, 
Beauty,  and  Grace  compared  to  the  glorious  consciousness  of 
being  fashionable ! 


THIS  JJ-EET  865 


DANCING  AND   COURTSHIP 

The  ballroom  is  Cupid's  camping  ground,  not  only  because  it 
facilitates  the  acquisition  of  that  grace  by  which  he  is  so  eapily 
enamoured,  but  because  it  affords  such  excellent  opportunities  for 
Courtship  and  Sexual  Selection.  And  this  applies  not  only  to  the 
era  of  modern  Romantic  Love,  but,  from  its  most  primitive  mani- 
festations in  the  animal  world,  dancing,  like  song,  has  been 
connected  with  love  and  courtship. 

Darwin  devotes  several  pages  to  a  description  of  the  love-antics 
and  dances  of  birds.  Some  of  them,  as  the  black  African  weaver, 
perform  their  love-antics  on  the  wing,  "  gliding  through  the  air 
with  quivering  wings,  which  make  a  rapid  whirring  sound  like  a 
child's  rattle ;"  others  remain  on  the  ground,  like  the  English 
white-throat,  which  "  flutters  with  a  fitful  and  fantastic  motion  ;" 
or  the  English  bustard,  who  "throws  himself  into  indescribably 
odd  attitudes  whilst  courting  the  female  ;"  and  a  third  class,  the 
famous  Bower-birds,  perform  their  love-antics  in  bowers  specially 
constructed  and  adorned  with  leaves,  shells,  and  feathers.  These 
are  the  earliest  ballrooms  known  in  natural  history ;  and  it  is 
quite  proper  to  call  them  so,  for,  as  Darwin  remarks,  they  "  are 
built  on  the  ground  for  the  sole  purpose  of  courtship,  for  their 
nests  are  formed  in  trees." 

Passing  on  to  primitive  man,  we  again  find  him  inferior  to 
animals  in  not  knowing  that  the  sole  proper  function  of  dancing  is 
in  the  service  of  Love,  courtship,  and  grace.  Savages  have  three 
classes  of  dance,  two  being  performed  by  the  men  alone,  the  third 
by  men  and  women.  First  come  the  war-dances,  in  which  the 
grotesquely-painted  warriors  brandish  their  spears  and  utter  un- 
earthly howls,  to  excite  themselves  for  an  approaching  contest. 
Second,  the  Hunter's  Dances,  in  which  the  game  is  impersonated 
by  some  of  the  men  and  chased  about,  which  leads  to  many  comic 
scenes ;  though  there  is  a  serious  undercurrent  of  superstition,  for 
they  believe  that  such  dances — a  sort  of  saltatorial  prayer — bring 
on  good  luck  in  the  subsequent  real  chase.  Third,  the  dance  of 
Love,  practised  e.g.  by  the  Brazilian  Indians,  with  whom  "  men 
and  women  dance  a  rude  courting  dance,  advancing  in  lines  with 
a  kind  of  primitive  polka  step "  (Tylor.)  That  there  is  as  little 
refinement  and  idealism  in  the  savage's  dances  as  in  his  love-affairs 
in  general  is  self-evident. 

The  civilised  nations  of  antiquity,  as  we  have  seen,  had  no 
prolonged  Courtship,  and  therefore  no  Romantic  Love.  Since 


366  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

young  men  and  women  were  not  allowed  to  meet  freely,  dancing 
was  of  course  not  esteemed  as  a  high  social  accomplishment.  It 
was  therefore  commonly  relegated  to  a  special  class  of  women  (or 
slaves),  such  as  the  Bayaderes  of  India  and  the  Greek  flute  girls. 
Notwithstanding  that  even  the  Greek  gods  are  sometimes  repre- 
sented as  dancing,  yet  this  art  came  to  be  considered  a  sign  of 
effeminacy  in  men  who  indulged  in  it ;  and  as  for  the  Romans,  their 
view  is  indicated  in  Cicero's  anathema :  "  No  man  who  is  sober 
dances,  unless  he  is  out  of  his  mind,  either  when  alone  or  in  decent 
society,  for  dancing  is  the  companion  of  wantow  conviviality, 
dissoluteness,  and  luxury." 

In  ancient  Egypt,  too,  the  upper  classes  were  not  allowed  to 
learn  dancing.  And  herein,  as  in  so  many  things  in  which  women 
are  concerned,  the  modern  Oriental  is  the  direct  descendant  of  the 
ancients.  "  In  the  eyes  of  the  Chinese,"  says  M.  Letourneau, 
"  dancing  is  a  ridiculous  amusement  by  which  a  man  compromises 
his  dignity." 

Plato  appears  to  have  been  the  first  who  recognised  the  import- 
ance of  dancing  as  affording  opportunities  for  Courtship  and 
pre-matrirnonial  acquaintance.  But  his  advice  remained  unheeded 
by  his  countrymen.  A  view  regarding  dancing  similar  to  Plato's 
was  announced  by  an  uncommonly  liberal  theologian  of  the  sixteenth 
century  in  the  words,  as  quoted  by  Scherr,  that  "  Dancing  had 
been  originally  arranged  and  permitted  with  the  respectable 
purpose  of  teaching  manners  to  the  young  in  the  presence  of  many 
people,  and  enabling  young  men  and  maidens  to  form  honest 
attachments.  For  in  the  dance  it  was  easy  to  observe  and  note 
the  habits  and  peculiarities  of  the  young." 

Thus  we  see  that,  with  the  exception  of  the  savage's  war-dances 
and  hunting  pantomimes,  the  art  of  dancing  has  at  all  times  and 
everywhere  been  born  of  love ;  even  the  ancient  religious  dances 
having  commonly  been  but  a  veil  concealing  other  purposes,  as 
among  the  Greeks.  But  all  ceremonial  dancing,  like  ceremonial 
kissing,  has  been  from  the  beginning  doomed  to  be  absorbed  and 
annihilated  by  the  all-engrossing  modern  passion  of  Romantic  Love, 

True,  as  a  miser  mistakes  the  means  for  the  end  and  loves  gold 
for  its  own  sake,  so  we  sometimes  see  girls  dance  alone — possibly 
with  a  vaguely  coy  intention  of  giving  the  men  to  understand  that 
they  can  get  along  without  them.  But  their  heart  is  not  in  it,  and 
they  never  do  it  when  there  are  men  enough  to  go  round.  As  for 
the  men,  they  are  too  open  and  frank  ever  to  veil  their  sentiments. 
They  never  dance  except  with  a  woman. 

To-day  our  fashion  and  society  papers  are  eternally  complaining 


THE  FEET  867 

of  the  fact  that  the  young  men — especially  the  desirable  young 
men — seem  to  have  lost  all  interest  in  dancing.  But  who  is  to 
blame  for  this?  Certainly  not  the  men.  It  is  Fashion  again, 
and  the  mothers  who  sacrifice  the  matrimonial  prospects  of  their 
daughters — as  well  as  their  Health,  Beauty,  and  Individuality — 
to  this  hideous  fetish.  It  is  the  late  hours  of  the  dance,  prescribed 
by  Fashion,  that  are  responsible  for  the  apparent  loss  of  masculine 
interest  in  this  art.  Formerly,  when  aristocracy  meant  laziness 
and  stupidity,  the  habit  of  turning  night  into  day  was  harmless 
or  even  useful,  because  it  helped  to  rid  the  world  prematurely  of  a 
lot  of  fools.  But  to-day  the  leading  men  of  the  community  are 
also  the  busiest.  Aristocracy  implies  activity,  intellectual  and 
otherwise.  Hence  there  are  few  men  in  the  higher  ranks  who 
have  not  their  regular  work  to  do  during  the  day.  To  ask  them 
after  a  day's  hard  labour  to  go  to  a  dance  beginning  at  midnight 
and  ending  at  four  or  five  is  to  ask  them  to  commit  suicide. 
Sensible  men  do  not  believe  in  slow  suicide,  hence  they  avoid 
dancing-parties  as  if  such  parties  were  held  in  small-pox  hospitals. 

Let  society  women  throw  their  stupid  conservatism  to  the 
winds.  Let  them  arrange  balls  to  begin  at  eight  or  nine  and  end 
at  midnight  or  one,  and  "  desirable  "  men  will  be  only  too  eager 
to  flock  to  assemblies  which  they  now  shun.  The  result  will  be  a 
sudden  and  startling  diminution  in  the  number  of  old  maids  and 
bachelors. 

It  is  the  moral  duty  of  mothers  who  have  marriageable  daugh- 
ters to  encourage  this  reform.  Maternal  love  does  not  merely 
imply  solicitude  for  the  first  twenty  years  of  a  daughter's  life,  but 
careful  provision  for  the  remainder  of  her  life,  covering  twice  that 
period,  by  enabling  her  to  meet  and  choose  a  husband  after  her 
own  heart. 

EVOLUTION   OF   DANCE   MUSIC 

Did  space  permit,  it  would  be  interesting  to  study  in  detail  the 
dances  of  various  epochs  and  countries,  coloured,  like  the  Love 
which  originated  them,  by  national  peculiarities  —  the  Polish 
mazourka  and  polonaise,  the  Spanish  fandango,  the  Viennese 
waltz,  the  Parisian  cancan,  etc.  Suffice  it  to  note  the  great 
difference  between  the  dances  of  a  few  generations  ago  and  those 
of  to-day,  as  shown  most  vividly  in  the  evolution  of  dance-music. 

The  earliest  dance-tunes  are  vocal,  and  were  sung  by  the  (pro- 
fessional) dancers  themselves,  in  the  days  when  the  young  were 
not  yet  allowed  to  meet,  converse,  and  flirt  and  dance.  Subse- 
quently, the  transference  of  dance-music  to  instruments  played  by 


368  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

others  gave  the  dancers  opportunity  to  perform  more  complicated 
figures,  and  made  it  possible  to  converse.  But  even  as  late  as  the 
eighteenth  century  dancing  and  dance-music  were  characterised  by 
a  stately  reserve,  slowness,  and  pompous  dignity  which  showed  at 
once  that  they  had  nothing  to  do  with  Romantic  Love.  It  was 
not  the  fiery,  passionate  youths  who  danced  these  solemnly  stupid 
minuets,  gavottes,  sarabandes,  and  allemandes,  but  the  older  folks, 
whose  perruques,  and  collars,  and  frills,  and  bloated  clothes  would 
not  have  enabled  them  to  execute  rapid  movements  even  if  the 
warm  blood  of  youth  had  coursed  in  their  veins. 

How  all  this  artificiality  and  snail-like  pomp  has  been  brushed 
away  by  triumphant  Romantic  Love,  which  has  secured  for  modern 
lovers  the  privilege  of  dancing  together  before  they  are  married 
and  cease  to  care  for  it !  True,  we  still  have  the  monotonous 
soporific  quadrille,  as  if  to  remind  us  of  bygone  times ;  but  the 
true  modern  dance  is  the  round  dance,  which  differs  from  the 
stately  mediaeval  dance  as  a  jolly  rural  picnic  does  from  a  formal 
morning  call. 

The  difference  between  the  mediaeval  and  the  modern  dance  ig 
thus  indicated  by  F.  Bremer : — 

"  Peculiar  to  modem  dance-music  is  the  round  dance,  especially 
the  waltz ;  and  it  is  in  consequence  warmer  than  the  older  dance- 
music,  more  passionate  in  expression,  in  rhythm  and  modulation 
more  sharply  accented.  As  its  creator  we  must  regard  Carl  Maria 
von  Weber,  who,  in  his  Invitation  to  Dance,  struck  the  keynote 
through  which  subsequently,  in  the  music  of  Chopin,  Lanner, 
Strauss,  Musard,  etc.,  utterance  was  given  to  the  whole  gamut 
of  dreamy,  languishing,  sentimental,  ardent  passion.  The  con- 
sequence was  the  displacement  of  the  stately,  measured  dances 
by  impetuous,  chivalrous  forms ;  and  in  place  of  the  former  naive 
sentimentality  and  childish  mirth,  it  is  the  rapture  of  Love  that 
constitutes  the  spirit  of  modern  dance-music." 

Not  to  speak  of  more  primitive  dance-tunes,  what  a  difference 
there  is  between  the  slow  and  dreary  monotony  of  eighteenth  cen- 
tury dances  and  a  Viennese  waltz  of  to-day!  The  vast  superiority 
of  a  Strauss  waltz  lies  in  this — that  it  is  no  longer  a  mere  rhythmic 
noise  calculated  to  guide  the  steps,  and  skips,  and  bows,  and  evolu- 
tions of  the  dancers,  but  the  symphonic  accompaniment  to  the  first 
act  in  the  drama  of  Romantic  Love.  It  recognises  the  fact  that 
Courtship  is  the  prime  object  of  the  dance.  Hence,  though  still 
bound  by  the  inevitable  dance  rhythm,  Strauss  is  ever  trying  to 
break  loose  from  it,  to  secure  that  freedom  and  variety  of  rhythm 
which  is  needed  to  give  full  utterance  to  passion.  Note  the  slow, 


THE  FEET  869 

pathetic  introductions ;  the  signs  in  the  score  indicating  an  accel- 
erated or  retarded  tempo  when  the  waltz  is  played  at  a  concert, 
where  the  uniformity  of  ballroom  movement  is  not  called  for ;  note 
what  subtle  use  he  makes  of  all  the  other  means  of  expressing 
amorous  feeling — the  wide  melodic  intervals,  the  piquant,  stirring 
harmonies,  the  exquisitely  melancholy  flashes  of  instrumental 
colouring,  alternating  with  cheerful  moments,  showing  a  subtle 
psychologic  art  of  translating  the  Mixed  Moods  of  Love  into  the 
language  of  tones. 

In  the  waltzes,  mazourkas,  and  polonaises  of  Chopin  we  see  still 
more  strikingly  that  the  true  function  of  dance-music  is  amorous. 
Even  as  Dante's  Love  for  Beatrice  was  too  super-sensual,  too 
ethereal  for  this  world,  so  Chopin's  dance-pieces  are  too  subtle, 
too  full  of  delicate  nuances  of  tempo  and  Love  episodes,  to  be 
adapted  to  a  ballroom  with  ordinary  mortals.  Graceful  fairies 
alone  could  dance  a  Chopin  waltz;  mortals  are  too  heavy,  too 
clumsy.  They  can  follow  an  amorous  Chopin  waltz  with  the 
imagination  alone,  which  is  the  abode  of  Romantic  Love.  To  a 
Strauss  waltz  a  hundred  couples  may  make  love  at  once,  hence  he 
writes  for  the  orchestra ;  but  Chopin  wrote  for  the  parlour  piano, 
because  the  feelings  he  utters  are  too  deep  to  be  realised  by  more 
than  two  at  a  time — one  who  plays  and  one  who  listens,  till  their 
souls  dance  together  in  an  ecstatic  embrace  of  Mutual  Sympathy. 

THE  DANCE   OP  LOVE 

It  is  at  Vienna,  which  has  more  feminine  grace  and  beauty  to 
the  square  mile  than  any  other  city  in  the  world,  that  the  art  of 
dancing  is  to  be  seen  in  its  greatest  perfection.  No  wonder  that 
it  is  the  home  of  the  Waltz-King,  Johann  Strauss ;  and  that  a 
Viennese  feuilletonist  has  shown  the  deepest  insight  into  the 
psychology  of  the  dance  in  an  article  from  which  the  following 
excerpts  are  taken : — 

"The  waltz  has  a  creative,  a  rejuvenating  power,  which  no 
other  dance  possesses.  The  skipping  polka  is  characterised  by  a 
certain  stiffness  and  angularity,  a  rhythm  rather  sober  and  old- 
fashioned.  The  galop  is  a  wild  hurricane,  which  moves  along 
rudely  and  threatens  to  blow  over  everything  that  comes  in  its 
way;  it  is  the  most  brutal  of  all  dances,  an  enemy  of  all  tender 
and  refined  feelings,  a  bacchanalian  rushing  up  and  down.  .  .  . 

"  The  waltz,  therefore,  remains  as  the  only  true  and  real  dance. 
"Waltzing  is  not  walking,  skipping,  jumping,  rushing,  raving ;  it  is 
a  gentle  floating  and  flying ;  from  the  heaviest  men  it  seems  to 

2s 


370  KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

take  away  some  of  their  materiality,  to  raise  the  most  massive 
women  from  the  ground  into  the  air.  True,  the  Viennese  alone 
know  how  to  dance  it,  as  they  alone  know  how  to  play  it.  ... 

"  The  waltz  insists  on  a  personal  monopoly,  on  being  loved  for 
its  own  sake,  and  permits  no  vapid  side-remarks  regarding  the  fine 
weather,  the  hot  room,  the  toilets  of  the  ladies ;  the  couple  glide 
along  hardly  speaking  a  word ;  except  that  she  may  beg  for  a 
pause,  or  he,  indefatigable,  insatiable,  intoxicated  by  the  music 
and  motion,  the  fragrance  of  flowers  and  ladies,  invites  her  to  a 
new  flight  around  the  hall.  And  yet  is  this  mute  dance  the  most 
eloquent,  the  most  expressive  and  emotional,  the  most  sensuous 
that  could  be  imagined  ;  and  if  the  dancer  has  anything  to  say  to 
his  partner,  let  him  mutely  confide  it  to  her  in  the  sweet  whirl 
of  a  waltz,  for  then  the  music  is  his  advocate,  then  every  bar 
pleads  for  him,  every  note  is  a  billet-doux,  every  breath  a  declara- 
tion of  love.  Jealous  husbands  do  not  allow  their  wives  to  waltz 
with  another  man.  They  are  right,  for  the  waltz  is  the  Dance  of 
Love." 

BALLET-DANCING 

There  is  one  more  form  of  dancing  which  may  be  briefly  alluded 
to,  because  it  illustrates  the  hypocrisy  of  the  average  mortal  as 
well  as  the  rarity  of  true  aesthetic  taste.  Solo  ballet-dancing  is 
admired  not  only  by  the  bald-headed  old  men  in  the  parquet,  but 
there  are  critics  who  seriously  discuss  such  dancing  as  if  it  were  a 
fine  art ;  generally  lamenting  the  good  old  times  of  the  great  and 
graceful  ballet-dancers.  The  truth  is  that  ballet -dancing  never 
can  be  graceful,  as  now  practised.  To  secure  graceful  movement 
it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  make  use  of  the  elasticity  of  the  toes 
— to  touch  the  ground  at  the  place  where  the  toes  articulate  with 
the  middle  foot,  and  to  give  the  last  push  with  the  yielding  great 
toe.  Ballet-dancers,  however,  walk  on  the  tips  of  their  stiffened 
toes,  the  result  of  which  is,  as  the  anatomist,  Professor  Kollmann, 
remarks,  that  "  their  gait  is  deprived  of  all  elasticity  and  becomes 
stiff,  as  in  going  on  stilts." 

It  speaks  well  for  the  growing  sensibility  of  mankind  that  this 
form  of  dancing  is  gradually  losing  favour.  Like  the  vocal  tight- 
rope dancing  of  the  operatic  prime  donne  with  whom  ballet- 
dancers  are  associated,  their  art  is  a  mere  circus-trick,  gaped  at 
as  a  difficult  tour  de  force,  but  appealing  in  no  sense  to  aesthetic 
sentiments. 

These  strictures,  of  course,  apply  merely  to  solo -dancing  on 
tiptoe.  The  spectacular  ballet,  which  delights  the  eye  with  kalei- 


THE  LOWER  LIMBS  871 

doscopic  colours  and  groupings,  is  quite  another  thing,  and  may  be 
made  highly  artistic. 

THE  LOWER  LIMBS 

MUSCULAR   DEVELOPMENT 

The  assumption  by  man  of  an  erect  attitude  has  modified  and 
improved  the  appearance  of  his  leg  and  thigh  quite  as  marvellously 
as  his  feet.  "  In  walking,"  says  Professor  Kollmann,  "  the  weight 
of  the  body  is  alternately  transferred  from  one  foot  to  the  other. 
Each  one  is  obliged  in  locomotion  to  take  its  turn  in  supporting 
the  whole  body,  which  explains  the  great  size  of  the  muscles  which 
make  up  man's  calf.  The  ape's  calf  is  smaller  for  the  reason  that 
these  animals  commonly  go  on  all  fours."  Professor  Carl  Vogt 
gives  these  details :  "  No  ape  has  such  a  cylindrical,  gradually 
diminishing  thigh ;  and  we  are  justified  in  saying  that  man  alone 
possesses  thighs.  The  muscles  of  the  leg  are  in  man  so  accumu- 
lated as  to  form  a  calf,  while  in  the  ape  they  are  more  equally  dis- 
tributed ;  still,  transitions  are  not  wanting,  since  one  of  the  greatest 
characteristics  of  the  negro  consists  in  his  calfless  leg."  And 
again  :  "  Man  possesses,  as  contrasted  with  the  ape,  a  distinctive 
character  in  the  strength,  rotundity,  and  length  of  the  lower  limb ; 
especially  in  the  thighs,  which  in  most  animals  are  shortened  in 
proportion  to  the  leg." 

The  words  here  italicised  call  attention  to  two  of  the  qualities 
of  Beauty — gradation  and  the  curve  of  rotundity — which  the  lower 
limbs  in  their  evolution  are  thus  seen  to  be  gradually  approximat- 
ing. Other  improvements  are  seen  in  the  greater  smoothness,  the 
more  graceful  and  expressive  gait  resulting  from  the  rounded  but 
straight  knee,  etc. 

The  implication  that  savages  are  in  the  muscular  development 
of  their  limbs  intermediate  between  apes  and  civilised  men  calls 
for  further  testimony  and  explanation.  Waitz  states  that  "in 
regard  to  muscular  power  Indians  are  commonly  inferior  to 
Europeans";  and  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has  collected  much  evi- 
dence of  a  similar  nature.  The  Ostyaks  have  "  thin  and  slender 
legs  " ;  the  Kamtchadales  "  short  and  slender  legs  " ;  those  of  the 
Chinooks  are  "  small  and  crooked " ;  and  the  African  Akka  have 
"  short  and  bandy  legs."  The  legs  of  Australians  are  "  inferior  in 
mass  of  muscle  " ;  the  gigantic  Patagonians  have  limbs  "  neither 
so  muscular  nor  so  large-boned  as  their  height  and  apparent  bulk 
would  induce  one  to  suppose."  Spencer  likewise  calls  attention  to 
the  fact  that  relatively-inferior  legs  are  "  a  trait  which,  remotely 


872  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

simian,  is  also  repeated  by  the  child  of  the  civilised  man  " — -which 
thus  individually  passes  through  the  several  stages  of  development 
that  have  successively  characterised  its  ancestors. 

Numerous  exceptions  are  of  course  to  be  found  to  the  rule  that 
the  muscular  rotundity  and  plumpness  of  the  limbs  increases  with 
civilisation.  The  lank  shins  which  may  be  seen  by  the  hundred 
among  the  bathers  at  our  sea-coast  resorts  contrast  disadvantage- 
ously  with  many  photographs  of  savages ;  and  tourists  in  Africa 
and  among  South  American  Indians  and  elsewhere  have  often 
enough  noted  the  occurrence  of  individuals  and  tribes  who  would 
have  furnished  admirable  models  for  sculptors.  But  this  only 
proves,  on  the  one  hand,  that  "  civilised"  persons  who  are  uncivil- 
ised in  their  neglect  of  the  laws  of  Health,  inevitably  lose  certain 
traits  of  Beauty  which  exercise  alone  can  give ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  those  "  savages  "  who  lead  an  active  and  healthy  life  are  in 
so  far  civilised,  and  therefore  enjoy  the  superior  attractions  bestowed 
by  civilisation.  Moreover,  as  Mr.  Spencer  suggests,  "  In  combat, 
the  power  exercised  by  arm  and  trunk  is  limited  by  the  power  of 
the  legs  to  withstand  the  strain  thrown  on  them.  Hence,  apart 
from  advantages  in  locomotion,  the  stronger-legged  nations  have 
tended  to  become,  other  things  equal,  dominant  races." 

"  Kengger,"  says  Darwin,  "  attributes  the  thin  legs  and  thick 
arms  of  the  Payaguas  Indians  to  successive  generations  having 
passed  nearly  their  whole  lives  in  CMIOCS,  with  their  lower  extremi- 
ties motionless.  Other  writers  have  come  to  a  similar  conclusion 
in  analogous  cases." 

Although  savages  have  to  hunt  for  a  living  and  occasionally  go 
to  war,  they  are  essentially  a  lazy  crew,  taking  no  more  exercise 
than  necessary ;  which  accounts  for  the  fact  that,  with  the  excep- 
tions noted,  their  muscular  development  is  inferior  to  that  of  higher 
races. 

BEAUTIFYING  EXEKCISE 

One  of  the  most  discouraging  aspects  of  modem  life  is  the 
growing  tendency  toward  concentration  of  the  population  in  large 
cities.  Not  only  is  the  air  less  salubrious  in  cities  than  in  the 
country,  but  the  numerous  cheap  facilities  for  riding  discourage  the 
habit  of  walking.  London  is  one  of  the  healthiest  cities,  and  the 
English  the  most  vigorous  race,  in  the  world ;  yet  it  is  said  that  it 
is  difficult  to  trace  a  London  family  down  through  five  generations. 
Few  Paris  families  can,  it  is  said,  be  traced  even  through  three 
generations.  Without  constant  rural  accessions  cities  would  tend 
to  become  depopulated. 


THE  LOWER  LIMBS  873 

The  enormous  importance  of  exercise  for  Health  and  Beauty, 
which  are  impossible  without  it,  is  vividly  brought  out  in  this 
statement  of  Kollmann's  :  "  Muscles  which  are  thoroughly  exer- 
cised do  not  only  retain  their  strength,  but  increase  in  circumference 
and  power,  in  man  as  in  animals.  The  flesh  is  then  firm,  and 
coloured  intensely  red.  In  a  paralysed  arm  the  muscles  are 
degenerated,  and  have  lost  a  portion  of  one  of  their  most  important 
constituents — albumen.  Repeated  contractions  strengthen  a  muscle, 
because  motion  accelerates  the  circulation  of  the  blood  and  the 
nutrition  of  the  tissues.  What  a  great  influence  this  has  on  the 
whole  body  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  the  organs  of 
locomotion — the  skeleton  and  muscles — make  up  more  than  82 
per  cent  of  the  substance  of  the  body.  With  this  enormous  pro- 
portion of  bone  and  muscle,  it  is  obvious  that  exercise  is  essential 
to  bodily  health." 

Exercise  in  a  gymnasium  is  useful  but  monotonous ;  and  too 
often  the  benefits  are  neutralised  by  the  insufficient  provision  for 
fresh  air,  without  which  exercise  is  worse  than  useless.  Hence  the 
superiority  of  open-air  games — base -ball,  tennis,  rowing,  riding, 
swimming,  etc.,  to  the  addiction  to  which  the  English  owe  so  much 
of  their  superior  physique.  Tourists  in  Canada  invariably  notice 
the  wonderful  figures  of  the  women,  which  they  owe  largely  to 
their  fondness  for  skating.  "  Beyond  question,"  says  the  Lancet, 
"  skating  is  one  of  the  finest  sports,  especially  for  ladies.  It  is 
graceful,  healthy,  stimulating  to  the  muscles,  and  it  develops  in  a 
very  high  degree  the  important  faculty  of  balancing  the  body  and 
preserving  perfect  control  over  the  whole  of  the  muscular  system, 
while  bringing  certain  muscles  into  action  at  will.  Moreover,  there 
is  this  about  it  which  is  of  especial  value  :  it  trains  by  exercise  the 
power  of  intentionally  inducing  and  maintaining  a  continuous  con- 
traction of  the  muscles  of  the  lower  extremity.  The  joints,  hip, 
knee,  and  ankle  are  firmly  fixed  or  rather  kept  steadily  under 
control,  while  the  limbs  are  so  set  by  their  muscular  apparatus 
that  they  form,  as  it  were,  part  of  the  skate  that  glides  over  the 
smooth  surface.  To  skate  well  and  gracefully  is  a  very  high 
accomplishment  indeed,  and  perhaps  one  of  the  very  best  exercises 
in  which  young  women  and  girls  can  engage  with  a  view  to  health- 
ful development." 

For  the  acquisition  of  a  graceful  gait  women  need  such  exercise 
more  even  than  men ;  and  while  engaged  in  it  they  should  pay 
especial  attention  to  exercising  the  left  side  of  the  body.  On  this 
point  Sir  Charles  Bell  has  made  the  following  suggestive  remarks : — 

"  We  see  that  opera-dancers  execute  their  more  difficult  feats 


374  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUT V 

on  the  right  foot,  but  their  preparatory  exercises  better  evince  the 
natural  weakness  of  the  left  limb ;  in  order  to  avoid  awkwardness 
in  the  public  exhibitions,  they  are  obliged  to  give  double  practice 
to  the  left  leg ;  and  if  they  neglect  to  do  so  an  ungraceful  prefer- 
ence to  the  right  side  will  be  remarked.  In  walking  behind  a 
person  we  seldom  see  an  equalised  motion  of  the  body ;  the  tread 
is  not  so  firm  upon  the  left  foot,  the  toe  is  not  so  much  turned  out, 
and  a  greater  push  is  made  with  the  right.  From  the  peculiar 
form  of  woman,  and  from  the  elasticity  of  her  step,  resulting  from 
the  motion  of  the  ankle  rather  than  of  the  haunches,  the  defect  of 
the  left  foot,  when  it  exists,  is  more  apparent  in  her  gait." 

Those  who  wish  to  acquire  a  graceful  gait  will  find  several 
useful  hints  in  this  extract  from  Professor  Kollmann's  Plastische 
Anatomic,  p.  506  : — 

"  Human  gait,  it  is  well  known,  is  subject  to  individual  varia- 
tions. Differences  are  to  be  noted  not  only  in  rapidity  of  motion, 
but  as  regards  the  position  of  the  trunk  and  the  movements  of  the 
limbs,  within  certain  limits.  For  instance,  the  gait  of  very  fat 
persons  is  somewhat  vacillating ;  other  persons  acquire  a  certain 
dignity  of  gait  by  bending  and  stretching  their  limbs  as  little  as 
possible  while  taking  long  steps ;  and  others  still  bend  their  knees 
very  much,  which  gives  a  slovenly  character  to  their  gait.  And 
as  regards  the  attitude  of  the  trunk,  a  different  effect  is  given 
according  as  it  is  inclined  backwards  or  forwards,  or  executes 
superfluous  movements  in  the  same  direction  or  to  the  sides.  All 
these  peculiarities  make  an  impression  on  our  eyes,  while  our  ears 
are  impressed  at  the  same  time  by  the  differences  in  rapidity  of 
movement,  so  that  we  learn  to  recognise  our  friends  by  the  sound 
of  their  walk  as  we  do  by  the  quality  of  their  voice." 

Bell  states  that  "upwards  of  fifty  muscles  of  the  arm  and 
hand  may  be  demonstrated,  which  must  all  consent  to  the 
simplest  action."  Walking  is  a  no  less  complicated  affair,  to 
which  the  attention  of  men  of  science  has  been  only  quite  recently 
directed.  The  new  process  of  instantaneous  photography  has 
been  found  very  useful,  but  much  remains  to  be  done  before  the 
mystery  of  a  graceful  gait  can  be  considered  solved.  If  some 
skilled  photographer  would  go  to  Spain  and  take  a  number  of 
instantaneous  pictures  of  Aiidalusian  girls,  the  most  graceful 
beings  in  the  world,  in  every  variety  of  attitude  and  motion,  he 
might  render  most  valuable  service  to  the  cause  of  personal 
aesthetics. 

The  time  will  come,  no  doubt,  when  dancing  masters  and 
mistresses  will  consider  the  teaching  of  the  waltz  and  the  lancers 


THE  LOWER  LIMBS  375 

only  the  crudest  and  easiest  part  of  their  work,  and  when  they 
will  have  advanced  classes  who  will  be  instructed  in  the  refine- 
ments of  movement  as  carefully  and  as  intelligently  as  professors 
of  music  teach  their  pupils  the  proper  use  of  the  parts  and  muscles 
of  the  hand,  to  attain  a  delicate  and  varied  touch.  The  majority 
of  women  might  make  much  more  progress  in  the  art  of  graceful- 
ness than  they  ever  will  in  music;  and  is  not  the  poetry  of 
motion  as  noble  and  desirable  an  object  of  study  as  any  other 
fine  art  ? 

FASHIONABLE  UGLINESS 

It  is  the  essence  of  fashion  to  exaggerate  everything  to  the 
point  of  ugliness.  Instead  of  trying  to  remedy  the  disadvantages 
to  their  gait  resulting  from  anatomical  peculiarities  (just  referred 
to  in  a  quotation  from  Bell),  women  frequently  take  pains  to 
deliberately  exaggerate  them.  As  Alexander  Walker  remarks : 
"  The  largeness  of  the  pelvis  and  the  approximation  of  the  knees 
influence  the  gait  of  woman,  and  render  it  vacillating  and  unsteady. 
Conscious  of  this,  women,  in  countries  where  the  nutritive  system 
in  general  and  the  pelvis  in  particular  are  large,  affect  a  greater 
degree  of  this  vacillating  unsteadiness.  An  example  of  this  is 
seen  in  the  lateral  and  rotatory  motion  which  is  given  to  the 
pelvis  in  walking  by  certain  classes  of  the  women  in  London." 

The  Egyptians  and  Arabians  consider  this  ludicrous  rotatory 
motion  a  great  fascination,  and  have  a  special  name  for  it — 
Ghung. 

But  Fashion,  the  handmaid  of  ugliness,  is  not  content  with 
aping  the  bad  taste  of  Arabians  and  Egyptians.  It  goes  several 
steps  lower  than  that,  down  to  the  Hottentots.  The  latest  hideous 
craze  of  Fashion,  against  which  not  one  woman  in  a  hundred 
had  taste  or  courage  enough  to  revolt — the  bustle  or  "dress- 
improver"(!) — was  simply  the  milliner's  substitute  for  an  ana- 
tomical peculiarity  natural  to  some  African  savages. 

"It  is  well  known,"  says  Darwin,  "  that  with  many  Hottentot 
women  the  posterior  part  of  the  body  projects  in  a  wonderful 
manner  t  they  are  steatopygous ;  and  Sir  Andrew  Smith  is  certain 
that  thio  peculiarity  is  greatly  admired  by  the  men.  He  once 
saw  a  woman  who  was  considered  a  beauty,  and  she  was  so 
immensely  developed  behind,  that  when  seated  on  level  ground 
she  could  not  rise,  and  had  to  push  herself  along  until  she  came  to 
a  slope.  Some  of  the  women  in  various  negro  tribes  have  the 
same  peculiarity ;  and,  according  to  Burton,  the  Somal  men  *  are 
said  to  choose  their  wives  by  ranging  them  in  a  lin<?,  and  by 


376  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

picking  her  out  who  projects  farthest  a  forgo.     Nothing  can  be 
more  hateful  to  a  negro  than  the  opposite  form.' " 

Evidently  "civilised"  and  savage  women  do  not  differ  as 
regards  Fashion,  the  handmaid  of  ugliness.  But  the  men  do. 
While  the  male  Hottentots  admire  the  natural  steatopyga  of  their 
women,  civilised  men,  without  exception,  detest  the  artificial 
imitation  of  it,  which  makes  a  woman  look  and  walk  like  a 
deformed  dromedary. 

THE   CRINOLINE   CRAZE 

The  bustle  is  not  only  objectionable  in  itself  as  a  hideous 
deformity  and  a  revival  of  Hottentot  taste,  but  still  more  as  a 
probable  forerunner  of  that  most  unutterably  vulgar  article  of 
dress  ever  invented  by  Fashion — the  crinoline.  For  we  read  that 
when,  in  1856,  the  crinoline  came  in  again,  it  was  preceded  by 
the  "  inelegant  bustle  in  the  upper  part  of  the  skirt " ;  and  it  is  a 
notorious  fact  that  cunning  milliners  are  making  strenuous  efforts 
every  year  to  reintroduce  the  crinoline. 

In  their  abhorrence  of  the  crinoline  men  do  not  stand  alone. 
There  are  several  refined  women  to-day  who  would  absolutely 
refuse  to  submit  to  the  tyranny  of  Fashion  if  it  should  again 
prescribe  the  crinoline.  One  of  these  is  evidently  Mrs.  Haweis, 
who  in  The  Art  of  Beauty  remarks  that  "The  crinoline  superseded 
all  our  attention  to  posture;  whilst  our  long  trains,  which  can 
hardly  look  inelegant  [?]  even  on  clumsy  persons,  make  small 
ankles  or  thick  ones  a  matter  of  little  moment.  We  have  become 
inexpressibly  slovenly.  We  no  longer  study  how  to  walk,  perhaps 
the  most  difficult  of  all  actions  to  do  gracefully.  Our  fashionable 
women  stride  and  loll  in  open  defiance  of  elegance,"  etc.  And 
again  :  "  This  gown  iu  outline  simply  looks  like  a  very  ill-shaped 
wine-glass  upside  down.  The  wide  crinoline  entirely  conceals 
every  natural  grace  of  attitude." 

Another  lady,  writing  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  (1859),  remarks 
concerning  the  crinoline:  "A  woman  in  this  rig  hangs  in  her 
skirts  like  a  clapper  in  a  bell ;  and  I  never  meet  one  without 
being  tempted  to  take  her  by  the  neck  and  ring  her." 

About  1710,  says  a  writer  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica, 
"as  if  resolved  that  their  figures  should  rival  their  heads  in 
extravagance,  they  introduced  the  hooped  petticoat,  at  first  worn 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  give  to  the  person  of  the  wearer  below  her 
very  tightly-laced  waist  a  contour  resembling  the  letter  V  inverted 
— A«  The  hooped  dresses,  thus  introduced,  about  1740  attained 
to  an  enormous  expansion ;  and  being  worn  at  theii  full  circum- 


THE  LOWER  LIMBS  877 

ference  immediately  below  the  waist,  they  in  many  ways  emulated 
the  most  outrageous  of  the  fardingales  of  the  Elizabethan  period." 

"About  1744  hoops  are  mentioned  as  so  extravagant,"  says 
Ohainbers's  Encyclopaedia,  "  that  a  woman  occupied  the  space  of 
six  men."  George  IV.  had  the  good  taste  to  abolish  them  by 
royal  command,  but  they  were  revived  in  1856.  The  newspapers 
of  two  decades  ago  daily  contained  accounts  of  accidents  due  to 
the  idiotic  crinoline.  "The  Spectator  dealt  out  much  cutting, 
though  playful,  raillery  at  the  hoops  of  his  day,  but  apparently 
with  little  effect ;  and  equally  unavailing  are  the  satires  of  Punch, 
and  other  caricaturists  of  the  present  time  against  the  hideous 
fashion  of  crinoline.  .  .  .  Owing  to  its  prevalence,  church-pews 
that  formerly  held  seven  are  now  let  for  six,  and  yet  feel  rather 
crowded.  The  hoops  are  sometimes  made  with  a  circumference  of 
four  or  even  five  yards." 

It  is  universally  admitted  that  the  human  form,  in  its  perfec- 
tion, is  Nature's  clief  d'ceuvre — the  most  finished  specimen  of  her 
workmanship.  Yet  the  accounts  of  savage  taste  given  by  travellers 
and  anthropologists  show  that  the  savage  is  never  satisfied  with 
the  human  outlines  as  God  made  them,  but  constantly  mars  and 
mutilates  them  by  altering  the  shape  of  the  head,  piercing  the 
nose,  filing  or  colouring  the  teeth,  enlarging  the  lips  to  enormous 
dimensions,  favouring  an  adipose  bustle,  etc.  This  is  precisely 
what  modem  Fashion,  the  handmaid  of  ugliness,  does.  We  have 
just  seen  how  fashionable  women,  unable  to  comprehend  the 
beauty  of  the  human  form,  have  for  several  generations  en- 
deavoured to  give  it  the  shape  of  "a  very  ill-shaped  wine-glass, 
upside  down,"  "  a  clapper  in  a  bell,"  or  "  the  letter  V  inverted." 
And  concerning  Queen  Elizabeth  the  Atlantic  writer  already 
quoted  says  very  pithily :  "  What  with  stomachers  and  pointed 
waist  and  fardingale,  and  sticking  in  here  and  sticking  out  there, 
and  ruffs  and  cuffs,  and  ouches  and  jewels  and  puckers,  she  looks 
like  a  hideous  flying  insect  with  expanded  wings,  seen  through  a 
microscope — not  at  all  like  a  woman." 

Fortunately,  for  the  moment,  the  crinoline,  like  the  fardingale, 
is  not  "in  fashion."  But,  as  already  stated,  there  is  considerable 
danger  of  a  new  invasion  every  year ;  and,  should  Fashion  pro- 
claim its  edict,  no  doubt  the  vast  majority  of  women  would  follow, 
as  they  did  a  decade  or  two  ago.  In  the  interest  of  good  taste, 
as  of  common  sense,  it  is  therefore  necessary  to  speak  with  brutal 
frankness  on  this  subject.  There  is  good  evidence  to  show  that 
the  crinoline  originated  in  the  desire  of  an  aristocratic  dame  of 
low  moral  principles  to  conceal  the  evidences  of  a  crime.  Hence 


878  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

the  original  French  name  for  the  crinoline — Cache-Bdtard.  Will 
respectable  and  refined  women  consent  once  more  to  have  the 
fashion  set  for  them  by  a  courtesan  ? 


THE  WAIST 

THE  BEAUTY   CURVE 

In  a  well-shaped  waist,  as  in  every  other  part  of  the  body,  the 
curved  line  of  Beauty,  with  its  delicate  gradations,  exercises  a 
great  charm.  Examination  of  a  Greek  statue  of  the  best  period, 
male  or  female,  or  of  the  goddess  of  beauty  in  the  Pagoda  at 
Bangalur,  India,  shows  a  slight  inward  curve  at  the  waist,  whereas 
in  early  Greek  and  Egyptian  art  this  curve  is  absent.  The  waist, 
therefore,  like  the  feet  and  limbs,  appears  to  have  been  gradually 
moulded  into  accordance  with  the  line  of  Beauty — a  notion  which 
is  also  supported  by  the  following  remarks  in  Tylor's  Anthropology: 
"If  fairly  chosen  photographs  of  Kaffirs  be  compared  with  a 
classic  model  such  as  the  Apollo,  it  will  be  noticed  that  the  trunk 
of  the  African  has  a  somewhat  wall-sided  straightness,  wanting  in 
the  inward  slope  which  gives  fineness  to  the  waist,  and  in  the 
expansion  below,  which  gives  breadth  across  the  hips,  these  being 
two  of  the  most  noticeable  points  in  the  classic  model  which  our 
painters  recognise  as  an  ideal  of  manly  beauty." 

In  woman,  owing  to  the  greater  dimensions  of  her  pelvis,  this 
curvature  is  more  pronounced  than  in  man ;  yet  even  in  woman  it 
must  be  slight  if  the  laws  of  Health  and  Beauty  are  to  suffer  no 
violation.  "  Moderation  "  is  the  one  word  which  Mr.  Ruskin  says 
he  would  have  inscribed  in  golden  letters  over  the  door  of  every 
school  of  art.  For  "  the  least  appearance  of  violence  or  extrava- 
gance, of  the  want  of  moderation  aud  restraint,  is,"  as  he  remarks, 
"  destructive  of  all  beauty  whatsoever  in  everything — colour,  form, 
motion,  language,  or  thought — giving  rise  to  that  which  in  colour 
we  call  glaring,  in  form  inelegant,  in  motion  ungraceful,  in  language 
coarse,  in  thought  undisciplined,  in  all  unchastened ;  which  quali- 
ties are  in  everything  most  painful,  because  the  signs  of  disobedient 
and  irregular  operation.  And  herein  we  at  last  find  the  reason  of 
that  which  has  been  so  often  noted  respecting  the  subtility  and 
almost  invisibility  of  natural  curves  and  colours,  and  why  it  is  that 
we  look  on  those  lines  as  least  beautiful  which  fall  into  wide  and 
far  license  of  curvature,  and  as  most  beautiful  which  appioach 
nearest  (so  that  the  curvilinear  character  be  distinctly  asserted)  to 


THE  WAIST  379 

the  government  of  the  right  line,  as  in  the  pure  and  severe  curves 
of  the  draperies  of  the  religious  painters,"  etc. 


THE  WASP-WAIST   MANIA. 

But  Fashion,  the  handmaid  of  ugliness,  too  vulgar  to  appreciate 
the  exquisite  beauty  of  slight  and  subtle  curvature,  makes  woman's 
waist  the  most  maltreated  and  deformed  part  of  her  body.  There 
is  not  one  woman  in  a  hundred  who  does  not  deliberately  destroy 
twenty  per  cent  of  her  Personal  Beauty  by  the  way  in  which  she 
reduces  the  natural  dimensions  of  her  waist.  There  is,  indeed, 
ground  to  believe  that  the  main  reason  why  the  bustle,  and  even 
the  crinoline,  are  not  looked  on  with  abhorrence  by  all  women  is 
because  they  aid  the  corset  in  making  the  waist  look  smaller  by 
contrast.  The  Wasp-waist  Mania  is  therefore  the  disease  which 
most  imperatively  calls  for  cure.  But  the  task  seems  almost 
hopeless ;  for,  as  a  female  writer  remarks,  it  is  almost  as  difficult 
to  cure  a  woman  of  the  corset  habit  as  a  man  of  intemperance  in 
drink. 

"The  injurious  custom  of  tight  lacing,"  says  Planch^  in  hia 
Cyclopedia  of  Costumes,  " '  a  custom  fertile  in  disease  and  death,' 
appears  to  have  been  introduced  by  the  Normans  as  early  as  the 
twelfth  century ;  and  the  romances  of  the  Middle  Ages  teem  with 
allusions  to  and  laudations  of  the  wasplike  waists  of  the  dames 
and  demoiselles  of  the  period.  .  .  .  Chaucer,  describing  the  car- 
penter's wife,  says  her  body  was  '  gentyll  and  small  as  a  weasel ' ; 
and  the  depraved  taste  extended  to  Scotland.  D unbar,  in  The 
Thistle  and  the  Rose,  describing  some  beautiful  women,  observes — 

"  *  Their  middles  were  as  small  as  wands.' 

And  to  make  their  middles  as  small  as  possible  has  been  ever 
since  an  unfortunate  mania  with  the  generality  of  the  fair  sex,  to 
the  detriment  of  their  health  and  the  distortion  of  their  forms." 

Ever  since  1602,  when  Felix  Plater  raised  his  voice  against  the 
corset,  physicians  have  written  against  tight  lacing.  But  not  only 
has  it  been  found  impossible  to  cure  this  mania,  even  its  causes 
have  remained  a  mystery  to  the  present  day.  Certainly  no  man 
can  understand  the  problem.  Is  it  simply  the  average  woman's 
lack  of  taste  that  urges  her  thus  to  mutilate  her  Personal  Beauty  ? 
Is  it  the  admiration  of  a  few  vulgar  "  mashers  "  and  barber's  pets 
— since  educated  men  detest  wasp-waists?  Or  is  it  simply  the 
proverbial  feminine  craze  for  emulating  one  another  and  arousing 
envy  by  excelling  in  some  extravagance  of  dress,  no  matter  at  what 


880  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

cost  ?  This  last  suggestion  is  probably  the  true  solution  of  the 
problem.  The  only  satisfaction  a  woman  can  get  from  having  a 
wasp-waist  is  the  envy  of  other  silly  women.  What  a  glorious 
recompense  for  her  aesthetic  suicide,  her  invalidism,  and  her  humil- 
iating confession  that  she  considers  the  natural  shape  of  God's 
masterwork — the  female  body — inferior  in  beauty  to  the  contours 
of  the  lowly  wasp  ! 

With  this  ignoble  pleasure  derived  from  the  envy  of  silly  women 
and  the  admiration  of  vulgar  men,  compare  a  few  of  the  disadvan- 
tages resulting  from  tight  lacing.  They  are  of  two  kinds — hygienic 
and  esthetic. 

Hygienic  Disadvantages. — Surely  no  woman  can  look  without  a 
shudder  at  a  fashionable  Parisian  figure  placed  side  by  side  with 
the  Venus  of  Milo  in  Professor  Flower's  Fashion  in  Deformity,  in 
Mrs.  Haweis's  Art  of  Beauty,  or  in  Behnke  and  Brown's  Voice, 
Song,  and  Speech  ;  or  look  without  horror  at  the  skeletons  show- 
ing the  excessive  compression  of  the  lower  ribs  brought  about  by 
fashionable  lacing,  and  the  injurious  displacement,  in  consequence, 
of  some  of  the  most  important  vital  organs.  Nor  can  any  young 
man  who  does  not  desire  to  marry  a  foredoomed  invalid,  and  raise- 
sickly  children,  fail  to  be  cured  for  ever  of  his  love  for  any  wasp- 
waisted  girl  if  he  will  take  the  trouble  to  read  the  account  of  the 
terrible  female  maladies  resulting  from  lacing,  given  in  Dr.  Gaillard 
Thomas's  famous  treatise  on  the  Diseases  of  Women,  in  the  chapter 
on  "  Improprieties  in  Dress."  To  cite  only  one  sentence :  Women, 
he  says,  subject  their  waist  to  a  "  constriction  which,  in  autopsy, 
will  sometimes  be  found  to  have  left  tJie  impress  of  the  ribs  upon 
the  liver,  producing  depressions  corresponding  to  them." 

Says  Dr.  J.  J.  Pope :  "  The  German  physiologist,  Sommering, 
has  enumerated  no  fewer  than  ninety-two  diseases  resulting  from, 
tight  lacing.  ...  *  But  I  do  not  lace  tightly,'  every  lady  is  ready 
to  answer.  No  woman  ever  did,  if  we  accept  her  own  statement. 
Yet  stay.  Why  does  your  corset  unclasp  with  a  snap  ?  And  why 
do  you  involuntarily  take  a  deep  breath  directly  it  is  loosened  ?  " 
Young  ladies  who  imagine  they  do  not  wear  too  tight  stays,  inas- 
much as  they  can  still  insert  their  hand,  will  find  the  fallacy  and 
danger  of  this  reasoning  exposed  in  Mr.  B.  Roth's  Dress:  its 
Sanitary  Aspect. 

The  last  line  which  I  have  italicised  is  of  extreme  significance. 
Perhaps  the  greatest  of  all  evils  resulting  from  tight  lacing  is  that  it 
discourages  or  prevents  deep  breathing,  which  is  so  absolutely  essen- 
tial to  the  maintenance  of  health  and  beauty.  The  "heaving 
bosom  "  of  a  maiden  may  be  a  fine  poetic  expression,  but  it  indi' 


THE  WAIST  881 

cates  that  the  maiden  wears  stays  and  breathes  at  the  wrong  (upper) 
end  of  her  lungs.  "  The  fact  of  a  patient  breathing  in  this  manner 
is  noted  by  a  physician  as  a  grave  symptom,  because  it  indicates 
mischief  of  a  vital  nature  in  lungs,  heart,  or  other  important  organ." 
Healthy  breathing  should  be  chiefly  costal  or  abdominal ;  but  this 
is  made  impossible  by  the  corset,  which  compresses  the  lower  ribs, 
till,  instead  of  being  widely  apart  below,  they  meet  in  the  middle, 
and  thus  prevent  the  lungs  from  expanding  and  receiving  the 
normal  share  of  oxygen,  the  only  true  elixir  of  life,  youth,  and 
beauty. 

This  wrong  breathing,  due  to  tight  lacing,  also  causes  "  conges- 
tion of  the  vessels  of  the  neck  and  throat  .  .  .  gasping,  jerking, 
and  fatigue  in  inspiration,  and  unevenness,  trembling,  and  undue 
vibration  in  the  production  and  emission  of  vocal  tone." 

Further,  as  the  Lancet  points  out,  "  tight  stays  are  a  common 
cause  of  so-called  *  weak  *  spine,  due  to  weakness  of  muscles  of  the 
back."  Lacing  prevents  the  abdominal  muscles  from  exercising 
their  natural  functions — alternate  relaxation  and  contraction :  "  A 
tight-laced  pair  of  stays  acts  precisely  as  a  splint  to  the  trunk,  and 
prevents  or  greatly  impedes  the  action  of  the  chief  back  muscles, 
which  therefore  become  weakened.  The  unfortunate  wearer  feels 
her  spine  weaken,  thinks  she  wants  more  support,  so  laces  herself 
still  tighter ;  she  no  doubt  does  get  some  support  in  this  way,  but 
at  what  a  terrible  cost ! " 

In  regard  to  tight  corsets,  as  another  physician  has  aptly  re- 
marked, women  are  like  the  victims  of  the  opium  habit,  who  also 
daily  feel  the  need  of  a  larger  dose  of  their  stimulant,  every  incre- 
ment  of  which  adds  a  year  to  their  age,  and  brings  them  a  few 
steps  nearer  disease  and  ugly  decrepitude. 

^Esthetic  Disadvantages. — Among  the  aesthetic  disadvantages 
resulting  from  the  Wasp-waist  Mania,  the  following  may  be  men- 
tioned, besides  the  loss  of  a  clear,  mellow,  musical  voice  already 
referred  to : — 

(1)  A  stiff,  inflexible  waist,  with  a  coarsely  exaggerated  contour, 
in  place  of  the  slight  and  subtle  curvature  so  becoming  to  woman. 
In  other  words,  a  violation  of  the  first  law  of  personal  aesthetics — 
imposing  the  shape  of  a  vulgar  garment  on  the  human  form,  in- 
stead of  making  the  dress  follow  the  outlines  of  the  body. 

(2)  A  sickly,  sallow  complexion,  pale  lips,  a  red  nose,  lack  of 
buoyancy,   general   feebleness,  lassitude,   apathy,  and    stupidity, 
resulting  from  the  fact  that  the  compression  of  the  waist  induces 
an  oxygen-famine.    The  eyes  lose  their  sparkle  and  love-inspiring 
magic,  the  features  are  perceptibly  distorted,  the  brow  is  prema- 


382  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

turely  wrinkled,  and  the  expression  and  temper  are  soured  by  the 
constant  discomfort  that  has  to  be  silently  endured. 

(3)  Ugly  shoulders.     A  woman's  shoulders  should  be  sloping 
and  well  rounded,  like  every  other  part  of  her  body.     Regarding 
the  common  feminine  deformity  of  square  shoulders,  Drs.  Brinton 
and  Napheys  remark,  in  their  work  on  Personal  Beauty,  that  "  in 
four  cases  out  of  five  it  has  been  brought  about  by  too  close-fitting 
corsets,  which  press  the  shoulder-blades  behind,  and  collar-bones  in 
front,  too  far  upwards,  and  thus   ruin   the  appearance  of  the 
shoulders." 

(4)  An  ugly  bust.     Tight  lacing  "  flattens  and  displaces  the 
breasts." 

(5)  Clumsiness.     The  corset  is  ruinous  to  grace.      "Almost 
daily,"  says  Dr.  Alice  B.  Stockham  (Tokology),  "  women  come  to 
my  office  [in  Chicago]  burdened  with  bands  and  heavy  clothing, 
every  vital  organ  restricted  by  dress.     It  is  not  unusual  to  count 
from  sixteen  to  eighteen  thicknesses  of  cloth  worn  tightly  about  the 
pliable  structure  of  the  waist."     And  Dr.  Lennox  Browne  advances 
the  following  crushing  argumentum  ad  feminam : — 

"  It  is  impossible  for  the  stiffly-corseted  girl  to  be  other  than 
inelegant  and  ungraceful  in  her  movements.  Her  imprisoned 
waist,  with  its  flabby  muscles,  has  no  chance  of  performing  beauti- 
ful undulatory  movements.  In  the  ballroom  the  ungraceful  motions 
of  our  stiff-figured  ladies  are  bad  enough  ;  there  is  no  possibility  for 
poetry  of  motion ;  but  nowhere  is  this  more  ludicrously  and,  to  the 
thoughtful,  painfully  manifest  than  in  the  tennis  court.  Let  any 
one  watch  the  movements  of  ladies  as  compared  with  those  of  male 
players,  and  the  absolute  ugliness  of  the  female  figure,  with  its 
stiff,  unyielding,  deformed,  round  waist,  will  at  once  be  seen. 
Ladies  can  only  bend  the  body  from  the  hip-joint.  All  that  won- 
derfully contrived  set  of  hinges,  with  their  connected  muscles,  in 
the  elastic  column  of  the  spine,  is  unable  to  act  from  the  shoulders 
downwards;  and  their  figures  remind  one  of  the  old-fashioned 
modern  Dutch  doll." 

CORPULENCE  AND   LEANNESS 

Many  women  consider  the  corset  necessary  as  a  figure- improver, 
especially  if  they  suffer  from  excessive  fatness.  They  will  be  sur- 
prised to  hear  that  the  corset  is  one  of  the  principal  causes  of  their 
corpulence.  Says  Professor  M.  Williams :  "  There  is  one  horror 
which  no  lady  can  bear  to  contemplate,  viz.  fat.  What  is  fat  1 
It  is  an  accumulation  of  unburnt  body-fuse.  How  can  we  get  rid 


THE  WAIST  383 

of  it  when  accumulated  in  excess  ?  Simply  by  burning  it  away — 
this  burning  being  done  by  means  of  the  oxygen  inhaled  by  the 
lungs.  If,  as  Mr.  Lennox  Browne  has  shown,  a  lady  with  normal 
lung  capacity  of  125  cubic  inches,  reduces  this  to  78  inches  by 
means  of  her  stays,  and  attains  118  inches  all  at  once  on  leaving 
them  off,  it  is  certain  that  her  prospects  of  becoming  fat  and  flabby 
as  she  advances  towards  middle  age  are  greatly  increased  by  tight 
lacing,  and  the  consequent  suppression  of  natural  respiration," 

Thus  corpulence  may  be  put  down  as  a  sixth — or  rather 
seventh  —  aesthetic  disadvantage  resulting  from  the  use  of 
corsets. 

The  reason  why  women,  although  inferior  to  men  in  muscular 
development,  have  softer  and  rounder  forms,  is  because  there  is  a 
greater  natural  tendency  in  women  than  in  men  towards  the  ac- 
cumulation of  fatty  tissue  under  the  skin.  The  least  excess  of  this 
adipose  tissue  is,  however,  as  fatal  as  emaciation  to  that  admiration 
of  Personal  Beauty  which  constitutes  the  essence  of  Love.  Lean- 
ness repels  the  sesthetico-amorous  sense  because  it  obliterates  the 
round  contours  of  beauty,  exposes  the  sinews  and  bones,  and  thus 
suggests  old  age  and  disease.  Corpulence  repels  it  because  it 
destroys  all  delicacy  of  form,  all  grace  of  movement,  and  in  its 
exaggerated  forms  may  indeed  be  looked  upon  as  a  real  disease 
imperatively  calling  for  medical  treatment;  as  Dr.  Oscar  Haas 
shows  most  clearly  and  concisely  in  his  pamphlet  on  the  "  Schwen- 
ninger  Cure,"  which  should  be  read  by  all  who  suffer  from  obesity. 

Although  the  very  "father  of  medicine,"  Hippokrates,  studied 
the  subject  of  corpulence,  and  formulated  rules  for  curing  it,  doctors 
still  disagree  regarding  some  of  the  details  of  its  treatment.  Some 
forbid  all  fatty  food,  others  prescribe  it  in  small  quantities,  and  Dr. 
Ebstein  specially  recommends  fat  viands  and  sauces  as  preventives ; 
but  the  preponderance  of  the  best  medical  opinion  is  against  him. 
Dr.  Say  recommends  the  drinking  of  very  large  quantities  of  tea, 
while  Professor  Oertel  urges  the  diminution  of  fluids  in  the  body, 
first  by  drinking  little,  and  secondly  by  inducing  copious  perspira- 
tion, either  arti.ioially  (by  hot  air  and  steam  baths,  etc.),  or,  what 
is  much  better,  by  brisk  daily  exercise.  Dr.  Schwenninger,  who 
secured  so  much  fame  by  reducing  Bismarck's  weight  about  40 
pounds,  forbids  the  taking  of  liquids  during  or  within  an  hour  or 
two  of  meal-time ;  in  other  words,  he  counsels  his  patients  not  to 
eat  and  drink  at  the  same  time. 

On  the  two  most  important  points  all  authorities  are  practically 
agreed.  They  are  that  the  patient  must  avoid  food  which  contains 
large  quantities  of  starch  and  sugar  (such  as  cake,  pastry,  potatoes, 


384  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

bread,  pudding,  honey,  syrup,  etc.) ;  and  secondly,  that  he  must  take 
as  much  exercise  as  possible  in  the  open  air,  because  during  walking 
the  bodily  fat  is  consumed  as  fuel,  to  keep  the  machine  going. 

The  notorious  Mr.  Banting,  who  reduced  his  weight  in  a  year 
irom  202  to  150  pounds,  "lived  on  beef,  mutton,  fish,  bacon,  dry 
toast  and  biscuit,  poultry,  game,  tea,  coffee,  claret,  and  sherry  in 
small  quantities,  and  a  night-cap  of  gin,  whisky,  brandy,  or  wine. 
He  abstained  from  the  following  articles  :  pork,  veal,  salmon,  eels, 
herrings,  sugar,  milk,  and  all  sorts  of  vegetables  grown  under- 
ground, and  nearly  all  fatty  and  farinaceous  substances.  He  daily 
drank  43  ounces  of  liquids.  On  this  diet  he  kept  himself  for  seven 
years  at  150  pounds.  He  found,  what  other  experience  confirms, 
that  sugar  was  t/te  most  powerful  of  all  fatteners"  (Dr.  G.  M. 
Beard,  in  Eating  and  Drinking,  a  most  entertaining  and  useful 
little  volume). 

Lean  persons  wishing  to  increase  their  weight  need  only  reverse 
the  directions  here  given  as  regards  the  choice  or  avoidance  of 
certain  articles  of  food.  Not  so,  however,  with  regard  to  exercise. 
If  you  wish  to  reduce  your  corpulence,  take  exercise ;  if  you  wish 
to  increase  your  weight,  again  take  exercise.  The  apparent  para- 
dox lurking  in  this  rule  is  easily  explained.  If  you  are  too  fat  and 
-walk  a  great  deal,  you  burn  up  the  superfluous  fat  and  lose  weight. 
If  you  are  too  lean  and  walk  a  great  deal  you  increase  the  bulk  of 
your  muscles,  and  thus  gain  weight.  Moreover,  you  greatly  stimu- 
late your  appetite,  and  become  able  to  eat  larger  quantities  of 
sweet  and  starchy  food — more  than  enough  to  counteract  the  wear 
and  tear  caused  by  the  exercise. 

Muscle  is  the  plastic  material  of  beauty.  Fat  should  only  be 
present  in  sufficient  quantity  to  prevent  the  irregular  outlines  of 
the  muscles  from  being  too  conspicuously  indicated,  at  the  expense 
of  rounded  smoothness.  What  the  ancient  Greeks  thought  on  this 
subject  is  vividly  shown  in  the  following  remarks  by  Dr.  Maas  : 
"According  to  the  unanimous  testimony  of  Thukydides,  Plato, 
Xenophon,  the  gymnastic  exercises  to  which  the  Greeks  were  so 
passionately  addicted,  and  which  constituted,  as  is  well  known,  a 
very  essential  part  of  the  public  education  of  the  young,  had  for 
their  avowed  object  the  prevention  of  undue  corpulence,  since  an 
excessive  paunch  did  not  only  offend  the  highly-developed  aesthetic 
sense  of  this  talented  nation,  but  was  justly  regarded  as  an  impedi- 
ment to  bodily  activity.  In  order,  therefore,  to  make  the  youths 
not  only  beautiful,  but  also  vigorous  and  able  to  resist  hardship, 
and  thus  more  capable  of  serving  their  country,  they  were,  from 
their  childhood,  and  uninterruptedly,  exercised  daily  in  running. 


THE  WAIST  385 

wrestling,  throwing  the  discus,  etc. ;  so  that  the  prevention  of  cor- 
pulence was  practically  raised  to  a  formal  state-maxim,  and  as  such 
enforced  occasionally  with  unyielding  persistence." 

The  ruinous  consequences  of  an  exaggerated  abdomen  to  the 
harmonious  proportions  of  the  body,  and  to  grace  of  attitude  and 
gait,  are  so  universally  known  that  it  would  be  superfluous  to 
apply  any  of  our  negative  tests  of  Beauty — such  as  the  facts  that 
apes  and  savages  are  commonly  characterised  by  protuberant 
bellies,  and  that  intemperance  and  gluttony  have  the  same  disas- 
trous effect  on  Personal  Beauty.  In  civilised  communities,  iudglence 
and  beer-drinking  are  the  chief  causes  predisposing  to  corpulence. 
In  Bavaria,  where  enormous  quantities  of  beer  are  consumed, 
almost  all  the  men  are  deformed  by  obesity ;  but  in  other  coun- 
tries, as  a  rule,  women  suffer  more  from  this  anomaly  than  men, 
because  they  lead  a  less  active  life. 

It  may  be  stated  as  a  general  rule  that  girls  under  eighteen  are 
too  slight  and  women  over  thirty  too  heavy — "fat  and  forty." 
This  calamity  is  commonly  looked  on  as  one  of  the  inevitable 
dispensations  of  Providence,  whereas  it  is  simply  a  result  of 
indolence  and  ignorance.  With  a  little  care  in  dieting,  and  two  or 
three  hours  a  day  devoted  to  walking,  rowing,  tennis,  swimming, 
dancing,  etc.,  any  young  lady  can  add  ten  to  fifteen  pounds  to  her 
weight  in  one  summer,  or  reduce  it  by  that  amount,  as  may  be 
desired.  But  as  the  consumption  of  enormous  quantities  of  fresh 
air  by  the  unimprisoned  lungs  is  the  absolute  condition  of  success 
in  this  beautifying  process,  it  is  useless  to  attempt  it  without 
laying  aside  the  corset. 

The  plea  that  corsets  are  needed  to  hold  up  the  heavy  clothing 
is  of  no  moment.  Women,  like  men,  should  wear  their  clothing 
suspended  from  the  shoulder,  which  is  a  great  deal  more  conducive 
to  health,  comfort,  and  gracefulness  than  the  clumsy  fashion  of 
attaching  everything  to  the  waist. 

Still  less  weight  can  be  attached  to  the  monstrous  argument 
that  women  need  stays  for  support.  What  an  insulting  proposi- 
tion to  assert  that  civilised  woman  is  so  imperfectly  constructed 
that  she  alone  of  all  created  beings  needs  artificial  surgical  support 
to  keep  her  body  in  position  !  If  there  are  any  women  so  very 
corpulent  or  so  very  lean  that  they  need  a  corset  as  a  figure-im- 
prover or  a  support,  then  let  them  have  it  for  heaven's  sake,  and 
look  upon  themselves  as  subjects  ripe  for  medical  treatment. 
What  is  objected  to  here  is  that  strong,  healthy,  well-shaped  girls 
should  deform  themselves  deliberately  by  wearing  tight,  unshapely 
corsets,  rankly  offensive  to  the  aesthetic  sense. 

2c 


886  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 


THE   FASHION   FETISH   ANALYSED 

Once  more  the  question  must  be  asked,  "  Why  do  women  wear 
such  hideous  things  as  crinolines,  bustles,  and  corsets,  so  univer- 
sally abhorred  by  men  ?"  Is  it  because  they  are  inferior  to  men 
in  aesthetic  taste  ?  Is  Schopenhauer  right  when  he  says  that 
"  women  are  and  remain,  on  the  whole,  the  most  absolute  and  in- 
curable Philistines  ? "  They  are  deficient  in  objectivity,  he  adds  : 
"  hence  they  have  no  real  intelligence  or  appreciation  for  music  or 
poetry,  or  the  plastic  arts ;  and  if  they  make  any  pretences  of 
this  sort,  it  is  only  apish  affectation  to  gratify  their  vanity.  Hence 
it  would  be  more  correct  to  call  them  the  uncesthetic  than  the 
beautiful  sex." 

The  pessimistic  woman-hater  no  doubt  exaggerates.  Yet — 
without  alluding  to  the  paucity  of  women  who  have  distinguished 
themselves  in  the  fine  arts — is  it  credible  that  the  average  woman 
would  so  readily  submit  to  a  repulsive  fashion  like  the  bustle,  or  a 
hat  "  adorned "  with  the  corpse  of  a  murdered  bird,  if  she  had 
even  a  trace  of  aesthetic  feeling?  If  women  had  the  refined 
aesthetic  taste  with  which  they  are  commonly  credited,  is  it  con- 
ceivable that  they  would  voluntarily  adopt  the  African  bustle, 
because  fashionable,  in  preference  to  a  more  becoming  style? 
Have  you  ever  heard  that  a  person  of  acknowledged  musical  taste, 
for  example,  gave  up  his  violin  or  piano  to  learn  the  African 
banjo,  because  that  happened  to  be  the  fashionable  instrument  1 

Yet  there  are,  no  doubt,  many  women  whose  eyes  even  custom 
cannot  blind  to  the  hideousness  of  most  Parisian  fashions.  Fut 
they  have  not  the  courage  to  show  their  superior  taste  in  their 
dresses,  being  overawed  and  paralysed  in  presence  of  a  monstrous 
idol,  the  Fashion  Fetish. 

Never  has  a  stone  image,  consecrated  by  cunning  priests,  exer- 
cised a  more  magic  influence  on  a  superstitious  heathen's  mind 
than  the  invisible  Fashion  Fetish  on  the  modern  feminine  intellect. 
It  is  both  amusing  and  pathetic  to  hear  a  woman  exclaim  :  "  Our 
women  are  most  blind  and  thoughtless  followers  of  fashions  still 
imposed  upon  them,  Heaven  knows  wherefore  and  ly  whom  "  (Mrs. 
Haweis). 

So  great  is  the  awe  in  which  this  Fetish  is  held  that  no  one 
has  yet  dared  to  lay  violent  hands  on  it.  Yet  if  we  now  knock  it 
on  the  head,  we  shall  find  it  hollow  inside ;  and  the  fragments, 
subjected  to  chemical  analysis,  show  that  they  consist  of  the 
following  five  elements  : — 


THE  WAIST  887 

(1)  Vulgar  Display  of  Wealth. — A  certain  number  of  rich 
people,  being  unable  to  distinguish  themselves  from  poorer  mortals 
in  any  other  way,  make  a  parade  of  their  money  by  constantly 
introducing  changes  ill  the  fashion  of  their  apparel  which  those 
who  have  less  income  are  unable  to  adopt  at  once.     This,  and  not 
the  love  of  novelty,  is  the  real  cause  of  the  minute  variations  in 
styles  constantly  introduced.     Of  course  it  is  generally  understood 
that  to  boast  of  your  wealth  is  as  vulgar  as  to  boast  of  your  wit 
or  wisdom ;  but  this  makes  no  difference,  for  Fashion  in  its  very 
essence  is  vulgar. 

(2)  Milliners'  Cunning.  —  Milliners  grow  fat  on  fasiiionable 
extravagance.     Hence  it  is  the  one  object  of  their  life  to  encour- 
age this  extravagance.     So  they  constantly  invent  new  styles,  to 
prevent  women  from   wearing  the   same  dress    more  than  one 
season.    And  every  customer  is  slyly  flattered  into  the  belief  that 
nothing  was  ever  so  becoming  to  her  as  the  latest  style,  though  it 
probably  makes  her  look  like  a  fright.     As  a  little  flattery  goes  a 
great  way  with  most  women,  the  milliner's  hypocrisy  escapes  de- 
tection.     "The  persons  who  devise  fashions  are  not  artists  in 
the  best  sense  of  the  word,  nor  are  they  persons  of  culture  or 
taste,"  as  Mr.  E.  L.  Godkin  remarks :  "  their  business  is  not  to 
provide  beautiful  costumes  but  new  ones." 

It  is  to  such  scheming  and  unscrupulous  artisans  that  women 
entrust  the  care  of  their  personal  appearance.  And  they  will  con- 
tinue doing  so  until  they  are  more  generally  taught  the  elements 
of  the  fine  arts  and  a  love  of  beauty  in  Nature. 

To  make  sure  of  a  rich  harvest,  milliners,  when  a  new  fashion 
has  appeared,  manufacture  all  their  goods  in  that  style,  so  that 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  buy  any  others,  all  of  which  are  de- 
clared "  bad  form."  And  their  poor  victims  meekly  submit  to  this 
tyranny ! 

(3)  Tyranny  of  the  Ugly  Majority.  —  This  is  another  form 
of  tyranny  from  which  ladies  suffer.     Most  women  are  ugly  and 
ungraceful,  and  resent  the  contrast  which  beautiful  women,  natur- 
ally and  becomingly  attired,  would  present  to  their  own  persons  : 
hence  they  favour  the  crinolette,  the  bustle,  the  corset,  the  long, 
trailing  dresses,  the  sleeve-puffs  at  the  shoulders,  etc.,  because  such 
fashionable  devices  make  all  women  look  equally  ugly  and  ungraceful 

Mrs.  Armytage  throws  light  on  the  origin  of  some  absurd 
fashions  when  she  refers  to  the  cases  of  "the  patches  first  ap- 
plied to  hide  an  ugly  wen :  of  cushions  carried  to  equalise  strangely- 
deformed  hips ;  of  long  skirts  to  cover  ugly  feet ;  and  long  shoes 
to  hide  an  excrescence  on  the  toe." 


888  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Surely  it  is  sufficient  to  expose  the  origin  of  such  fashions  to 
make  sensible  women  turn  away  from  them  in  disgust.  There 
are  indeed  indications  that  the  handsome  women  have  at  last 
begun  to  find  out  the  trick  which  the  ugly  majority  have  been 
playing  on  them ;  and  many  are  now  dressing  in  such  a  way  as  to 
show  their  personal  beauty  to  advantage,  undaunted  by  the  fact 
that  ugly  women  pretend  to  be  shocked  at  short  dresses  which 
allow  a  pretty  ankle  to  be  seen,  and  jerseys  which  reveal  the  out- 
lines of  a  beautiful  bust  and  waist. 

(4)  Cowardice. — Many  women  adopt   a  fashion   which  they 
dislike  simply  because  they  do  not  dare  to  face  the  remark  of  a 
rival  that  they  are  not  in  fashion.     As  one  of  them  frankly  con- 
fesses :  "  We  women  dress  not  to  be  simple,  genuine,  and  harmoni- 
ous, or  even  to  please  you  men,  but  to  brave  each  other's  criticism" 
A  noble  motive,  truly ! 

One  is  often  tempted  to  doubt  the  old  saying  that  the  first 
desire  of  women  is  to  be  considered  beautiful,  on  observing  how 
ready  they  are  to  sacrifice  fifty  per  cent  or  more  of  their  beauty 
for  the  sake  of  being  in  fashion.  Last  summer,  for  instance,  the 
edict  seems  to  have  gone  forth  that  the  hair  was  no  longer  to  be 
allowed  to  form  a  graceful  fringe  over  the  forehead,  but  was  to  be 
combed  back  tightly.  So  back  it  was  combed,  and  beautiful 
faces  became  rarer  than  ever.  Leigh  Hunt  had  written  in  vain 
that  the  hair  should  be  brought  over  large  bare  foreheads  "as 
vines  are  trailed  over  a  wall."  Thdophile  Gautier,  "the  most 
perfect  poet  in  respect  of  poetical  form  that  France  has  ever  pro- 
duced "  (Saintsbury),  agreed  with  Schopenhauer  regarding  woman's 
aesthetic  sense :  "  Women,"  he  says,  "  have  only  the  sense  of 
fashion  and  not  that  of  beauty.  A  woman  will  always  find 
beautiful  the  most  abominable  fashion  if  it  is  the  genre  supreme 
to  wear  that  style."  He  commends  the  women  of  Granada  for 
their  good  taste  in  preferring  their  lovely  mantillas  to  the  hideous 
French  hats,  and  hopes  Spain  may  never  be  invaded  by  French 
fashions  and  milliners. 

(5)  S/ieepishness. — It  may  seem  ungallant  to  apply  this  term 
to  the  conduct  of  a  woman  who  imitates  the  habits  of  a  sheep ; 
but,  after  all,  which  is  the  more  gallant  action :  to  applaud  a 
woman's  self-chosen  ugliness,  or,  at  least,  to  ignore  it  for  fear  of 
offending  her ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  to  restore  her  beauty  by 
boldly  holding  up  the  mirror  and  allowing  her  to  see  herself  as 
others  see  her?     It  is  the  nature  of  a  flock  of  sheep  to  jump 
into  the  sea  without  a  moment's  hesitation  if  their  leader  does 
so.     It  is  the  nature  of  fashionable  women  to  commit  aesthetic 


THE  WAIST  889 

suicide    if    their    leader    sets    the    example.      Where    is     the 
difference  1 

It  is  surprising  that  Darwin  did  not  refer  to  Fashion  as  fur- 
nishing a  most  convincing  proof  of  his  theory  that  men  are 
descended  from  apelike  ancestors.  One  of  the  ape's  most  con- 
spicuous traits  is  imitativeness — blind,  silly,  slavish  imitation  : 
hence  the  verb  "  to  ape."  Blind,  silly,  slavish  imitation  is  also 
the  essence  of  Fashion.  Imitativeness  implies  a  low  order  of 
mind,  a  lack  of  originality.  The  more  a  man  is  intellectually 
removed  from  the  ape,  the  less  is  he  inclined  to  imitate  blindly. 
Men  of  genius  are  a  law  unto  themselves,  while  inferior  minds  can 
only  re-echo  or  plagiarise.  Just  so  the  prevalent  anxiety  to  be  in 
fashion  is  a  tacit  confession  of  mental  inferiority,  of  insufficient 
independence  of  taste  and  originality  to  choose  a  style  suited  to 
one's  individual  requirements. 

INDIVIDUALISM    VERSUS  FASHION 

Fashion  is  a  deadly  enemy  of  Romantic  Love,  not  only  because 
it  makes  women  sacrifice  their  Beauty  to  unhealthful  garments  and 
habits,  but  because  it  obliterates  individuality,  on  which  the 
ardour  of  Love  depends.  "Why  don't  girls  marry?"  asks  Mrs. 
Haweis.  "  Because  the  press  is  great,  and  girls  are  undistinguish- 
able  in  the  crowd.  The  distinguishable  ones  marry — those  who 
are  beautiful  or  magnetic  in  some  way,  whose  characters  have 
some  definite  colouring,  and  who  can  make  their  individuality 
felt.  I  would  have  said — who  can  make  themselves  in  any  way 
conspicuous,  but  that  the  word  has  been  too  long  associated  with 
an  undesirable  prominence.  Yet  after  all,  prominence  is  the  thing 
needed — prominence  of  character,  or  individuality.  Men,  so  to 
speak,  pitch  upon  the  girls  they  can  see :  those  who  are  com- 
pletely negative,  unnoticeable,  colourless,  formless,  invisible,  are 
left  behind." 

Women,  in  their  eagerness  to  sacrifice  their  individuality  to 
Fashion,  forget  that  fashion  leaders  are  never  in  fashion,  i.e.  that 
they  always  adopt  a  new  style  as  soon  as  the  crowd  has  aped 
them  :  wherefore  it  is  doubly  silly  to  join  the  apes. 

Mile.  Sarah  Bernhardt  never  allows  a  corset  to  deform  her 
figure  and  mar  her  movements :  and  who  has  not  had  occasion 
to  admire  the  inimitable  grace  of  this  actress  1  But  how  many 
women  have  the  courage  thus  to  sacrifice  Fashion  to  Grace  and 
Beauty? 

Yetj  notwithstanding  the  continuance  of  the  corset  and  the 


390  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

hustle  mania  and  Parisian  hats,  it  may  be  asserted  that  women  are 
just  at  present  more  sensibly  dressed  than  they  have  been  for  some 
generations,  and  there  is  some  disposition  to  listen  to  the  artistic 
and  hygienic  advice  of  reformers.  Unfortunately,  the  history  of 
Fashion  does  not  tend  to  confirm  any  optimistic  hopes  that  may 
be  based  on  this  fact.  There  have  been  periods  heretofore  when 
women  became  comparatively  sensible,  only  to  relapse  again  into 
utter  barbarism.  Thus  we  read  that  "after  the  straight  gown 
came  the  fardingale,  which  in  turn  developed  into  the  hoop  with 
its  concomitants  of  patches,  paint,  and  high-heeled  shoes."  Then 
came  the  reaction :  "  Short  waists  and  limp,  clinging  draperies 
came  in  to  expose  every  contour;  stays  and  corsets  were  for  a 
time  discredited,  only  to  be  reintroduced,  and  with  them  the 
whole  cycle  of  fashions  which  had  once  already  had  their  day." 

Experience  shows  that  argumentation,  ridicule,  malicious  or 
good-natured,  and  satire,  are  equally  powerless  against  Fashion. 
Progress  can  only  be  hoped  for  in  two  ways — by  instructing 
women  in  the  elementary  laws  of  beauty  in  nature  and  mankind, 
and  by  destroying  the  superstitious  halo  around  the  word  Fashion. 
It  has  just  been  shown  that  a  disposition  to  imitate  a  fashion  set 
by  others  is  always  a  sign  of  inferior  intellect  and  rudimentary 
taste ;  and  the  time  no  doubt  will  come  when  this  fact  will  be 
generally  recognised,  and  when  it  will  be  considered  anything  but 
a  compliment  to  have  it  said  that  one  follows  the  flock  of  fashion- 
able imitators. 

The  progress  of  democratic  institutions  and  sentiments  will  aid 
in  emancipating  women  from  the  slavery  of  Fashion.  Empresses 
who  can  set  the  fashion  for  two  continents  are  becoming  scarce ; 
and  the  woman  of  the  future  will  no  doubt  open  her  eyes  wide 
in  astonishment  on  reading  that  in  the  nineteenth  century  most 
women  allowed  some  mysterious  personage  to  prescribe  what  they 
should  wear.  " Can  it  be  possible"  she  will  exclaim,  " that  my 
poor  dear  grandmothers  did  not  know  that  what  is  food  for  one 
person  is  poison  for  another,  and  that  any  fashion  universally 
followed  means  aesthetic  suicide  for  nine-tenths  of  the  women  who 
adopt  it  ?  /am  my  own  fashion-leader,  and  wear  only  what  in 
becoming  to  my  individual  style  of  beauty.  What  a  preposterous 
notion  to  proclaim  that  any  particular  colour  or  cut  is  to  be  ex- 
clusively fashionable  this  year  for  all  women,  for  blondes  and 
brunettes,  for  the  tall  and  the  short,  the  stout  and  the  slim  alike  ! 
What  could  have  induced  those  women  thus  to  annihilate  their 
own  beauty  deliberately?  And  not  only  their  totality,  but  their 
comfort  as  well.  For  I  see  that  in  New  York,  Fashion  used  to 


THE  WAIST  891 

decree  that  women  must  exchange  their  light,  comfortable  summer 
clothes  for  heavier  autumn  fabrics  exactly  in  the  middle  of  Sep- 
tember, although  the  last  two  weeks  of  September  are  often  the 
hottest  part  of  the  year.  And  the  women,  almost  without  excep- 
tion, obeyed  this  decree ! 

"  And  then  those  long  trailing  dresses  !  How  they  must  have 
added  to  their  ease  and  grace  of  movement  in  the  ballroom,  tucked 
up  clumsily  or  held  in  the  hand  !  And  it  seems  that  these  trails 
were  even  worn  in  the  dirty  streets,  for  I  see  that  at  one  time  the 
Dresden  authorities  forbade  women  to  sweep  the  streets  with  their 
dresses ;  and  in  one  of  Mr.  Ruskin's  works  I  find  this  advice  to 
girls :  *  Your  walking  dress  must  never  touch  the  ground  at  all. 
I  have  lost  much  of  the  faith  I  once  had  in  the  common  sense, 
and  even  in  the  personal  delicacy,  of  the  present  race  of  average 
English  women,  by  seeing  how  they  will  allow  their  dresses  to 
sweep  the  streets  if  it  is  tlie  fashion  to  be  scavengers.1  n 

MASCULINE   FASHIONS 

In  his  emancipation  from  Fashion  man  has  made  much  more 
progress  than  woman.  There  is  still  a  considerable  number  of 
shallow-brained  young  "  society  men "  who  naively  and  minutely 
accept  the  slight  variations  introduced  every  year  in  the  cut  and 
style  of  cravats,  shirts,  and  evening-dress  by  cunning  tailors,  in 
order  to  compel  men  to  throw  away  last  season's  suits  and  order 
new  ones.  But  much  larger  is  the  number  of  men  who  disregard 
such  innovations,  and  laugh  at  the  silly  persons  who  meekly  accept 
them,  even  when  their  taste  is  offended  by  such  new  fashions  as 
the  hideous  collars  and  hats  with  which  the  market  is  occasionally 
flooded. 

There  was  a  time  when  men  spent  as  much  time  and  money  on 
dress  in  a  week  as  they  now  do  in  a  year ;  a  time  when  men  were 
as  strictly  ruled  by  capricious,  cunning  Fashion  as  women  are  to- 
day. Lord  March,  we  read,  "  laid  a  wager  that  he  would  make 
fashionable  the  most  humiliating  dress  he  could  think  of.  Accord- 
ingly, he  wore  a  blue  coat  with  crimson  collar  and  cuffs — a  livery, 
and  not  a  tasteful  livery — but  he  won  his  bet."  After  the  battle 
of  Agincourt,  it  is  said,  "  the  Due  de  Bourbon,  in  order  to  ransom 
King  John,  sold  his  overcoat  to  a  London  Jew,  who  gave  no  more 
than  its  value,  we  may  be  pretty  sure,  but  nevertheless  gave  5200 
crowns  of  gold  for  it.  It  seems  to  have  been  a  mass  of  the  most 
precious  gems."  The  Duke  of  Buckingham  "  had  twenty-seven 
suits  of  clothes  made,  the  richest  that  embroidery,  lace,  silk,  velvet, 


392  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

silver,  gold,  and  gems  could  contribute ;  one  of  which  was  a  white 
uncut  velvet,  set  all  over,  both  suit  and  cloak,  with  diamonds 
valued  at  fourscore  thousand  pounds,  besides  a  great  feather  stuck 
all  over  with  diamonds,  as  were  also  his  sword,  girdle,  hat,  and 
spurs." 

Mr.  Spencer  cites  two  amusing  instances  of  masculine  subjection 
to  fashion  in  Africa  and  mediaeval  Europe.  Among  the  Darfurs 
in  Africa,  "  If  the  sultan,  being  on  horseback,  happens  to  fall  off, 
all  his  followers  must  fall  off  likewise ;  and  should  any  one  omit 
this  formality,  however  great  he  may  be,  he  is  laid  down  and 
beaten."  "In  1461,  Duke  Philip  of  Burgundy,  having  had  his 
hair  cut  during  an  illness,  issued  an  edict  that  all  the  nobles  of 
his  states  should  be  shorn  also.  More  than  five  hundred  persons 
sacrificed  their  hair." 

So  far  as  men  are  still  subject  to  the  influence  of  ugly  fashions, 
they  differ  from  women  in  at  least  frankly  acknowledging  the 
ugliness  of  these  fashions.  Whereas  most  women  admire,  or  pre- 
tend to  admire,  corsets,  high-heeled  boots,  crinolettes,  bustles,  etc., 
there  are  few  men  who  do  not  detest  e.g.  the  unshapely,  baggy 
trousers,  which  were  so  greatly  abhorred  by  the  aesthetic  sense  of 
the  ancient  Greeks ;  and  most  men  to-day  (except  those  who  have 
ugly  legs)  would  gladly  wear  knee-breeches,  if  they  could  do  so 
without  making  themselves  too  conspicuous.  Herein  lies  the 
greatest  impediment  to  dress  reform.  To  make  oneself  very  con- 
spicuous is  justly  considered  a  breach  of  good  manners ;  and  few 
have  the  courage,  like  Mr.  Oscar  Wilde,  to  make  martyrs  and 
butts  of  ridicule  of  themselves. 

But  if  individuals  are  comparatively  powerless,  clubs  of  acknow- 
ledged standing  might  make  themselves  very  useful  to  the  cause 
of  Personal  Beauty,  as  affected  by  dress,  if  they  would  vote  to 
adopt  in  a  body  certain  reforms  as  regards  trousers,  hats,  and 
evening-dress.  Then  it  would  no  longer  be  said  of  a  man  ration- 
ally dressed  that  he  is  eccentric,  but  that  he  belongs  to  the  X 

Club ;  and  many  outsiders  would  immediately  follow  suit  for  the 
coveted  distinction  of  being  taken  for  members  of  that  club.  Thus 
both  the  wise  and  the  foolish  would  be  gratified. 

As  showing  how  invariably  and  consistently  Fashion  is  the 
handmaid  of  ugliness,  it  is  curious  to  note  that  the  several  styles 
of  dress  worn  by  men  are  fashionable  in  proportion  to  their  ugli- 
ness. For  the  greatest  occasions  the  swallow-tail  or  evening-dress 
is  prescribed.  Next  in  rank  is  the  ugly  frock-coat,  for  morning 
calls.  Of  late,  it  is  true,  the  more  becoming  "cut-away"  has 
been  tolerated  in  place  of  the  frock-coat ;  but  the  sack-coat,  which 


THE  WAIST  393 

alone  follows  the  natural  outlines  of  the  body,  and  neither  has  a 
caudal  appendage,  like  the  evening-dress,  nor,  like  the  frock-coat, 
gives  the  impression  that  a  man's  waist  extends  down  to  his  knees, 
is  altogether  tabooed  at  social  gatherings,  except  those  of  the  most 
informal  kind. 

Man's  evening-dress  is  so  uniquely  unsesthetic  and  ugly  that 
fashionable  women  have  of  course  long  been  eyeing  it  with  envj 
and  have  gradually  adopted  some  of  its  features.  One  of  these  is 
the  chimney-pot  hat,  the  cause  of  so  much  premature  baldness  and 
discomfort.  But  women  are  not  quite  so  foolish  as  men  in  this 
matter ;  for  they  do  not  wear  tall  hats  at  evening-parties  and  the 
opera,  but  only  when  out  riding,  where  the  necessity  of  dodging 
about  to  keep  them  on  against  the  force  of  the  wind  and  the  blo\vs 
of  overhanging  boughs,  compels  them  to  go  through  all  sorts  of 
grotesque  gymnastics  with  neck  and  head.  If  they  wore  a  more 
rational  and  becoming  head-dress  on  horseback  they  might  easily 
look  pretty  and  graceful,  which  would  be  fatal  to  their  chances  of 
being  considered  fashionable 

In  comparing  masculine  and  feminine  fashions,  we  must  note 
that  trousers  and  swallow-tailed  coats,  though  ugly,  are  harmless ; 
while  high -heeled  shoes,  corsets,  chignons,  etc.,  are  as  fatal  to 
health  as  to  Personal  Beauty. 

It  is  sometimes  claimed  in  behalf  of  Fashion  that,  though  it 
often  favours  ugliness,  it  establishes  a  rule  and  model  for  all; 
whereas,  if  everything  were  left  to  individual  taste,  the  result 
might  be  still  more  disastrous.  Nonsense.  Rare  as  good  taste  is 
among  women,  a  modicum  is  commonly  present ;  and  there  are 
extremely  few  who,  if  not  overawed  by  the  Fashion  Fetish,  would 
ever  invent  or  adopt  such  hideous  irrepressible  monstrosities  as 
bustles,  crinolines,  chignons,  trailing  dresses,  Chinese  boots,  bird- 
corpse  hats,  etc. 

A  protest  must,  finally,  be  made  against  the  horrible  figures 
which  in  our  fashion  papers  are  constantly  offered  as  models  of 
style  and  appearance.  Even  in  the  best  of  them,  such  as  Harper's 
JZazar,  which  frequently  points  out  the  injuriousness  of  tight 
lacing,  female  figures  are  printed  every  week  with  hideously 
narrow  waists,  such  as  no  woman  could  possibly  possess  unless  she 
were  in  the  last  stages  of  consumption,  or  some  other  wasting 
disease. 


394  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

CHEST   AND   BOSOM 

FEMININE  BEAUTY 

Burke,  in  his  chapter  on  "  Gradual  Variation  "  as  a  character- 
istic of  Beauty,  begs  us  to  "  observe  that  part  of  a  beautiful  woman 
where  she  is  perhaps  the  most  beautiful,  about  the  neck  and 
breasts;  the  smoothness,  the  softness,  the  easy  and  insensible 
swell ;  the  variety  of  the  surface,  which  is  never  for  the  smallest 
space  the  same  ;  the  deceitful  maze  through  which  the  unsteady 
eye  slides  giddily,  without  knowing  where  to  fix,  or  whither  it  is 
carried.  Is  not  this  a  demonstration  of  that  change  of  surface, 
continual,  and  yet  hardly  perceptible  at  any  point,  which  forms 
one  of  the  greatest  constituents  of  beauty  ? " 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  beautifully-rounded  form  of 
the  female  bosom  is  a  result  of  sesthetico-sexual  selection ;  for 
primitive  human  tribes  resemble  in  this  respect  the  lower  animals. 
Says  the  famous  anatomist  Hyrtl :  "  It  is  only  among  the  white 
and  yellow  races  that  the  breasts,  in  their  compact  virginal  con- 
dition, have  a  hemispheric  form,  while  those  of  negresses  of  a 
corresponding  age  and  physique  are  more  elongated,  pointed, 
turned  outwards  and  downwards ;  in  a  word,  more  like  the  teats 
of  animals."  Even  the  Arabian  poets  sing  of  the  charms  of  a 
goatlike  breast.  <{' In  the  Soudan  older  women,  when  at  work, 
sometimes  throw  their  breasts  over  the  shoulder  to  prevent  them 
from  being  in  the  way ;  and  "  the  women  of  the  Basutos,  a  Kaffir 
tribe,  carry  their  children  on  the  back,  and  pass  the  breast  to  them 
under  the  armJ2 

It  is  a  vefymteresting  and  important  fact  that  not  only  do  we 
find  more  beauty  among  the  higher  than  among  the  lower  races  of 
mankind,  but  the  superior  beauty  of  civilised  races  is  also  of  a 
more  permanent  kind.  This  truth  is  admirably  illustrated  in  the 
following  remarks  by  Dr.  Peschuel  Lceschke :  The  breasts  of  the 
Loango  negress,  he  says,  "approach  the  conic  rather  than  the 
hemispheric  form. ;  they  often  have  a  too  small  and  insufficiently 
gradated  basis,  and  in  rare  extreme  cases  have  almost  the  appear- 
ance of  teats,  besides  being  unequally  developed.  Breasts  of  such 
a  shape  are  naturally  much  more  easily  affected  by  the  law  of 
gravitation,  and  soon  become  changed  into  the  pendent  bags  which 
we  find  so  ugly,  especially  among  Africans,  although  they  also  occur 
among  other  tribes,  and  are  not  unknown  among  civilised  peoples. 
The  superior  form,  with  a  broad  basis,  is  naturally  the  more 


CHEST  AND  BOSOM  395 

enduring,  and  remains  in  many  cases  an  ornament  of  women  of  a 
more  advanced  age." 

Savages  and  Orientals,  being  deficient  in  aesthetic  taste,  admire 
an  excessively -developed  bust  Europeans,  on  the  other  hand, 
long  ago  recognised  the  connection  between  such  a  bust  and 
clumsy,  unhealthy  corpulence,  suggesting  advanced  age.  The 
same  appears  to  have  been  true  of  the  most  refined  nations  of 
antiquity.  Says  Professor  Kollmann  :  "The  ancient  as  well  as 
the  modern  inhabitants  of  the  Nile  region  appear,  in  the  majority 
of  cases,  like  those  of  India,  to  possess  hemispheric  breasts,  for 
neither  in  the  sphinxes  or  other  superhuman  beings,  nor  in  the 
images  of  human  beauties,  do  we  come  across  pointed  breasts.  .  .  . 
The  Romans  did  not  consider  large  bosoms  a  mark  of  beauty. 
Among  European  women  the  Portuguese  are  said  to  have  the 
largest  busts,  the  Castilians  the  smallest.  To  judge  by  Rubens's 
nude  figures,  the  Netherland  women  appear  to  rival  the  Portuguese 
in  exuberant  bosoms." 

In  Greek  works  of  art,  says  Wmckelmann,  "the  breast  or 
bosom  of  female  figures  is  never  exuberant."  "  Among  ideal 
figures,  the  Amazons  alone  have  large  and  fully-developed  breasts." 
"  The  form  of  the  breasts  in  the  figures  of  divinities  is  virginal  in 
the  extreme,  since  their  beauty  was  made  to  consist  in  the 
moderateness  of  their  size.  A  stone,  found  in  the  Island  of  Naxos, 
was  smoothly  polished  and  placed  upon  them  for  the  purpose  of 
repressing  an  undue  development." 

Modern  Fashion,  for  a  wonder,  endorses  the  Greek  standard  of 
beauty  as  regards  a  moderately-developed  bust.  But  it  was  not 
always  thus.  It  is  Fashion  that  induces  some  savages  whose 
breasts  are  naturally  long  and  hanging  to  use  bandages  which 
make  them  still  more  hanging  and  elongated  in  form.  In  Spain, 
during  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  century,  and  in  other  parts 
of  Europe,  on  the  contrary,  Fashion  prescribed  flat  chests.  Plates 
of  lead  were  tied  on  the  breasts  of  young  girls  with  such  force 
that  sometimes  the  natural  form  was  replaced  by  an  actual  depres- 
sion where  "  love's  pillows  "  should  have  been.  In  some  parts  of 
South  Germany  and  the  Tyrol  a  similar  fashion  prevails  to  the 
present  day  among  the  lower  classes,  the  result  being  not  only  a 
sacrifice  of  beauty,  but  a  great  mortality  among  the  children,  that 
have  to  be  reared  artificially  in  consequence  of  it. 

But  if  modern  Fashion  has  a  correct  standard  of  taste  in  this 
matter,  it  nevertheless  encourages  practices  which  lead  to  as 
disastrous  results  as  the  Spanish  fashions  of  three  centuries  ago. 
"The  horrible  custom  of  wearing  pads,"  says  the  author  of  the 


396  KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Ugly  Girl  Papers,  "  is  the  ruin  of  natural  figures,  by  heating  and 
pressing  down  the  bosom.  ...  A  low,  deep  bosom,  rather  than  a 
bold  one,  is  a  sign  of  grace  in  a  full-grown  woman,  and  a  full  bust 
is  hardly  admirable  in  an  unmarried  girl.  Her  figure  should  be 
all  curves,  but  slender,  promising  a  fuller  beauty  when  maturity 
is  reached.  One  is  not  fond  of  over-ripe  years.  .  .  .  Due  atten- 
tion to  the  general  laws  of  health  always  has  its  effect  in  restoring 
the  bust  to  its  roundness.  .  .  .  Weakness  of  any  kind  affects  the 
contour  of  the  figure,  and  it  is  useless  to  try  to  improve  it  in  any 
other  way  than  by  restoring  the  strength  where  it  is  wanting." 

The  same  author,  whose  book  is  brimful  of  useful  advice,  not 
only  to  "  ugly  girls,"  but  to  those  who  have  beauty  and  wish  to 
preserve  it,  also  recommends  battledore,  swinging  the  skipping-rope 
over  the  shoulder,  swinging  by  the  hand  from  a  rope,  as  well  as 
playing  ball,  "  bean  bags,"  pillow  fights,  and  especially  daily  vocal 
exercises  with  corset  off  and  lungs  deeply  inflated — as  excellent 
means  of  improving  the  bust. 

If  women  could  be  made  to  realise  how  rarely  they  succeed, 
even  with  the  aid  of  the  cleverest  milliner,  in  counterfeiting  a 
properly  developed  chest,  they  would,  perhaps,  be  more  willing  to. 
submit  to  the  exercise  or  regimen  requisite  for  the  acquirement 
and  preservation  of  Personal  Beauty.  Flat  chests  are  a  conse- 
quence of  insufficient  muscular  exercise,  insufficient  fresh  air,  and 
insufficient  food.  The  main  reason  why  the  majority  of  girls  in 
the  world  are  over-delicate  and  fragile  is  because  they  do  not  get 
enough  properly-cooked  food  in  which  fat  is  introduced  in  such  a 
way  as  to  be  palatable  and  digestible.  The  adipose  layer  between 
the  skin  and  the  muscles  contributes  so  much  to  the  undulating 
roundness  of  contour  peculiar  to  feminine  beauty,  that  Kollmann 
places  it  among  the  differentiating  sexual  characteristics. 

Too  exuberant  busts,  on  the  other  hand,  are  the  result  of  too 
much  indulgence  in  fattening  food,  combined  with  lack  of  exercise 
in  the  open  air,  which 'would  consume  the  fat.  Maternity,  with 
proper  hygienic  precautions,  is  never  fatal  to  a  fine  bust. 

That  savages,  like  their  civilised  brethren  and  sisters,  owe  their 
deformed  chests  entirely  to  their  indolence  and  neglect  of  the  laws 
of  health,  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  there  are  notable  exceptions — 
energetic  tribes  living  healthy  lives,  and  therefore  blessed  with 
beautiful  figures.  Thus  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace  tells  us  regarding  some 
of  the  Amazon  valley  Indians  that  "  their  figures  are  generally 
superb ;  and  I  have  never  felt  so  much  pleasure  in  gazing  at  the 
finest  statue  as  at  these  living  illustrations  of  the  beauty  of  the 
human  form.  The  development  of  the  bust  is  such  as  I  believe 


CHEST  AND  BOSOM  397 

never  exists  in  the  best-formed  European,  exhibiting  a  splendid 
series  of  convex  undulations,  without  a  hollow  in  any  part  of  it" 
And  what  he  says  in  another  place  regarding  a  neighbouring  tribe 
explains  the  secret  of  this  Beauty :  "  Though  some  of  them  were 
too  fat,  most  of  them  had  splendid  figures,  and  many  of  them  were 
very  pretty.  Before  daylight  in  the  morning  all  were  astir  and 
came  to  the  river  to  wash.  It  is  the  chilliest  hour  of  the  twenty- 
four,  and  when  we  were  wrapping  our  sheet  or  blanket  more 
closely  around  us,  we  could  hear  the  plunges  and  splashings  of 
these  early  bathers.  Rain  or  wind  is  all  alike  to  them :  their 
morning  bath  is  never  dispensed  with." 


MASCULINE  BEAUTY 

Wincklemann  remarks  that,  among  the  ancient  Greeks,  "a 
proudly-arched  chest  was  regarded  as  a  universal  attribute  of 
beauty  in  male  figures.  The  father  of  the  poets  describes  Neptune 
with  such  a  chest,  and  Agamemnon  as  resembling  him ;  and  such 
a  one  Anakreon  desired  to  see  in  the  image  of  the  youth  whom  he 
loved." 

"  A  prominent,  arched  chest,"  says  Professor  Kollmann,  "  is  an 
infallible  sign  of  a  vigorous,  healthy  skeleton  ;  whereas  a  narrow, 
flat,  and,  still  more,  a  bent  thorax  is  a  physical  index  of  bodily 
weakness  and  inherited  decrepitude.  An  arched  chest  imparts  to 
a  man's  whole  figure  an  aspect  of  physical  perfection,  not  to  say 
sublimity,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  ancient  statues  of  gods,  in  which 
the  chest  is  intentionally  made  more  prominent  than  it  ever  can  be 
in  a  man,  presumably  in  order  to  weaken  the  impression  of  the 
chest's  more  animal  neighbour,  the  abdomen.  There  is  a  deep 
meaning  in  our  phraseology  which  localises  courage,  boldness, 
martial  valour,  in  a  man's  vigorous  breast." 

I  have  italicised  several  words  in  this&quotation,  because  they 
tersely  show  how  writers  on  art  are  guided  both  by  the  positive 
and  negative  tests  of  Beauty  formulated  in  another  part  of  this 
volume. 

MAGIC  EFFECT   OF   DEEP   BREATHING 

Indolence  is  the  mother  of  ugliness.  No  one  who  realises  the 
absolute  necessity  to  Health  of  a  sufficient  supply  of  fresh  air  can 
wonder  at  the  rarity  of  Beauty  in  the  world,  if  he  considers  that 
nineteen  people  out  of  every  twenty  are  too  lazy  to  breathe  properly. 

It  is  estimated  that  there  are  from  75  to  100  cubic  inches  of 
air  which  always  remain  in  a  man's  lungs.  About  an  equal  amount 


398  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

of  "  supplemental "  air  remains  after  an  ordinary  expiration ;  and 
only  20  to  30  inches  of  what  Professor  Huxley  calls  "  tidal  air  " 
passes  in  and  out.  But  this  "  tidal  air  "  can  be  largely  increased 
in  amount  by  the  habit  of  breathing  deeply  and  slowly,  whereby 
an  additional  supply  of  oxygen  is  supplied  to  the  lungs,  which  is 
a  thousand  times  better  for  the  health  than  quinine,  iron  pills,  or 
any  other  tonic.  There  are  few  persons  whose  health  and  personal 
appearance  would  not  be  improved  vastly  if  they  would  take  several 
daily  meals  of  fresh  air — consisting  of  20-50  deep  inspirations  in  a 
park  or  some  other  place  where  the  air  is  pure  and  bracing.  Slowly 
inhale  as  much  air  as  you  can  get  into  the  lungs  without  discomfort 
(avoiding  a  strain),  and  then  exhale  again  just  as  slowly.  After  a 
while  the  habit  will  be  formed  of  constantly  breathing  more  deeply 
than  formerly,  both  awake  and  asleep ;  thus  bringing  into  regular 
use  a  larger  part  of  the  lungs'  surface.  It  is  the  slight  sense  of 
fatigue  at  first  accompanying  deep  breathing  which  prevents  most 
people  from  enjoying  its  benefits;  but  when  once  this  natural 
indolence  is  overcome  the  reward  of  deep  breathing  is  analogous 
to  the  delicious  exhilaration  which  follows  a  brisk  walk  or  a  cold 
bath. 

It  is  important  to  note  that  all  breathing,  whether  deep  or 
ordinary,  should  be  done  through  the  nose,  as  thus  the  air  is 
warmed  before  it  reaches  the  delicate  lungs,  and  the  mucous 
membranes  remain  moist,  thus  preventing  those  disagreeable 
enemies  of  refreshing  sleep — a  dry  mouth  and  snoring. 

Habitual  deep  breathing  adds  to  Personal  Beauty  not  only  by 
exercising  the  muscles  of  the  chest,  which  thus  becomes  more 
arched  and  prominent  relatively  to  the  abdomen,  but  also  by 
throwing  back  the  neck  and  head  and  compelling  the  whole  body 
to  assume  a  straight,  military  attitude.  We  are  all  taught  as 
children,  says  Professor  Kollmann,  to  hold  ourselves  straight ;  but 
rarely  is  the  information  added  that  the  best  way  to  secure  an 
erect,  manly  bearing  and  a  dignified  gait  is  by  cultivating  the  habit 
of  deep  breathing.  "  It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  forcible  breathing, 
such  as  results  from  a  correct  bearing,  from  prolonged  sojourn  and 
exercise  in  the  open  air,  in  hunting,  gymnastic  exercises,  riding, 
etc.,  not  only  increases  the  chest  for  the  moment,  but  permanently. 
.  .  .  There  are  proofs  in  abundance  that  even  with  young  persons 
of  eighteen  to  twenty  years,  the  whole  circumference  of  the  chest 
is  capable  of  considerable  widening  under  such  circumstances." 

A  medical  writer,  referring  to  the  fact  that  children  frequently 
become  round-shouldered  from  sitting  for  hours  and  bending  over 
a  desk,  makes  these  very  sensible  suggestions : — 


CHEST  AND  BOSOM  899 

"In  the  first  place,  the  lungs  should  be  fully  expanded  by 
drawing  iii  all  the  air  that  is  possible ;  this  process  will  be  aided 
by  throwing  the  shoulders  well  back,  and  you  should  encourage  your 
children  to  do  this  frequently  in  the  open  air  when  going  to  and 
coming  from  school.  Children  are  easily  bribed,  and  we  would 
suggest  to  school  teachers  a  simple  and  effective  way  of  accom- 
plishing this  desirable  end.  This  forcible  expansion  of  the  lungs 
will  enlarge  the  chest  and  increase  its  circumference.  Then  let  the 
teacher,  at  the  beginning  of  the  session,  measure  each  child's  chest 
and  record  the  circumference,  then  explain  and  demonstrate  to  them 
how  to  forcibly  fill  the  lungs,  and  offer  a  premium  at  the  end  of 
the  session  to  the  child  who  shall  have  most  increased  the 
circumference  of  his  chest ;  make  it  worth  their  while  to  expand 
their  lungs,  as  much  so  as  we  now  do  for  them  to  expand  their 
minds,  and  the  result  will  be  wonderful." 

A  MORAL  QUESTION 

An  eminent  authority  on  the  physiology  of  the  vocal  organs, 
Dr.  Lennox  Browne,  remarks  (in  Voice,  Song,  and  Speech],  that 
"respiratory  exercises,  and  subsequently  lessons  in  reading,  recit- 
ing, and  singing,  are  oftentimes  of  the  greatest  use  in  strength- 
ening a  weak  chest ;  and,  indeed,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  in 
arresting  consumption"  Another  excellent  authority,  Mr.  A.  B. 
Bach,  points  out  (in  his  Musical  Education  and  Vocal  Culture^ 
which  should  be  consulted  by  all  who  wish  to  learn  the  art  of 
Deep  Breathing)  that  "  very  few  vocalists  die  of  consumption," 
owing  to  the  fact  that  they  properly  exercise  their  lungs  and 
chests. 

This  brings  us  face  to  face  with  a  moral  question  of  enormous 
importance,  to  which  writers  on  ethics  have  by  no  means  as  yet 
given  the  attention  it  loudly  clamours  for.  Consumption,  we  read, 
"  is  a  disease  of  great  frequency  and  severity,  which,  in  the  civilised 
nations  of  Europe,  produces  from  one-sixth  to  one-tenth  of  tlie  total 
mortality,  in  ordinary  times."  Now  if,  as  we  have  just  seen, 
consumption  can  be  arrested  and  cured  by  proper  exercise  of  the 
lungs  and  chest  in  pure  air,  does  it  not  follow  that  the  neglect  of 
such  exercises  makes  certain  parties  criminally  responsible  for  the 
greater  number  of  deaths  from  consumption?  It  is  "proved  by 
careful  inquiries  that  the  workshops  of  tailors,  printers,  and  other 
businesses  carried  on  in  close,  ill-ventilated  apartments,  by  large 
numbers  of  workmen,  are,  in  a  very  aggravated  sense,  nurseries  of 
consumption.  Cotton  and  linen  factories  have  also  been  shown, 


400  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

when  ill-regulated,  to  be  largely  responsible  for  the  death  of  their 
inmates  from  this  disease." 

Why  should  not  the  owners  of  factories  who  refuse  to  ventilate 
their  buildings  be  held  responsible  for  the  ill-health,  the  early 
decrepitude  and  death  of  many  of  the  workers,  and  the  workers' 
weakly,  consumptive  children  who  die  young  1  As  England  alone 
has  over  three  hundred  thousand  women  engaged  in  cotton  manu- 
facture, the  amount  of  ill-health,  early  senility,  ugliness,  consump- 
tion, etc.,  bred  by  criminal  neglect  of  hygienic  precautions,  is 
appalling  to  the  imagination.  A  case  was  mentioned  in  the 
American  papers  a  few  years  ago,  where  the  windows  in  a  factory 
were  nailed  fast  to  prevent  the  poor,  suffocating  girls  from  opening 
them.  And,  strange  to  say,  the  owner  of  that  factory  was  not 
immediately  lynched.  Surely,  if  ever  a  monster  deserved  to  be 
hanged  to  the  nearest  tree,  it  was  the  man  who  ordered  those 
windows  to  be  nailed  down. 

But  factory  owners  are  by  no  means  the  only  persons  who  are 
thus  responsible  for  indirect  manslaughter  by  foul-air  poisoning. 
Thousands  of  loving  mothers  and  fathers  blaspheme  their  Creator 
in  attributing  the  early  death  of  their  children  to  a  "  dispensation 
of  Providence,"  when  the  plain  truth,  brutally  expressed,  is  that 
they  killed  them  with  the  poisoned  air,  indigestible  food,  and 
insufficient  exercise  that  brought  on  the  fatal  consumption.  To 
say  that  the  disease  was  hereditary  is  only  to  shift  the  hygienic 
crime  on  the  shoulders  of  the  grand-parents. 

In  human  courts  of  justice  ignorance  of  the  law  is  not  considered 
an  excuse  for  the  commission  of  crime.  If  the  same  principle 
holds  true  in  some  future  world  where  human  actions  will  be 
judged,  what  terrible  indictments  will  be  brought  against  some 
parents  for  crimes  committed  against  the  health  and  life  of  their 
children  and  grandchildren,  for  neglecting  to  learn  the  laws  of 
health,  as  laid  down  in  physiological  and  hygienic  textbooks  ! 

Inasmuch  as  Personal  Beauty  is  the  flower  and  symbol  of  perfect 
Health,  it  might  be  shown,  by  following  out  this  argument,  that 
ugliness  is  a  sin,  and  man's  first  duty  the  cultivation  of  Beauty. 


NECK  AND  SHOULDER 

Nowhere  are  the  aesthetic  laws  of  Gradation  and  gentle  Curva- 
ture more  beautifully  illustrated  than  in  the  neck — the  column  of 
the  head.  Note  how  a  lovely  woman's  neck  repeats  on  a  small 
scale  the  delicate  contours  of  the  trunk — widened  at  the  base  and 


NECK  AND  SHOULDER  401 

at  the  top,  with  a  subtle  inward  slope  towards  the  middle.  Note, 
also,  how  imperceptibly  it  passes  into  the  shoulders,  which  continue 
the  gentle  curve  in  a  downward  slope,  unless  prevented  by  the 
deforming  corset. 

Man's  neck  is  less  cylindrical  than  woman's,  and  presents  four 
slightly  flattened  surfaces ;  while  his  shoulders  are  not  sloping,  but 
square.  We  not  only  pardon,  but  even  admire  and  demand  this 
conformation  in  man ;  because  in  judging  masculine  beauty  we  are 
guided  by  dynamic  as  much  as  by  aesthetic  considerations,  while 
the  fair  sex  is  judged  by  the  laws  of  beauty  alone.  A  masculine 
neck  is  in  good  form  if  it  shows  traces  of  the  sinews  and  muscles 
which  give  it  strength ;  but  in  a  woman's  neck  the  feminine 
adipose  layer  under  the  skin  must  obliterate  ail  such  traces  of 
masculinity, — especially  the  bones  at  the  junction  of  neck  and 
breast,  the  prominence  of  which  suggests  emaciation  and  disease. 

In  the  face  of  such  considerations,  how  can  any  one  maintain 
that  man  is  more  beautiful  than  woman  ?  He  may  show  mor* 
character,  more  individuality,  more  originality  than  a  fine  woman, 
but  more  beauty  never.  And  the  fact  that  in  Sexual  Selection 
women  have  always  been  chiefly  guided  by  dynamic  considerations 
— i.e.  vigour,  boldness,  "  manliness " — whereas  men  have  been 
fascinated  by  beauty  alone,  explains  why,  as  Schopenhauer  asserts, 
women  are  the  "  unsesthetic  sex,"  and  why  their  taste  for  Personal 
Beauty,  not  being  exercised,  like  that  of  man,  in  the  selection  of  a 
mate,  is  so  lamentably  callous  to  the  deformities  resulting  from 
corsets  and  other  instruments  of  torture. 

The  neck  being  the  pivot  on  which  the  head  executes  its  move- 
ments, it  is  evident  that  it  requires  attention  from  the  point  of 
view  of  Grace  as  well  as  of  Beauty.  To  how  many  women  has  it 
ever  occurred  that  as  the  feet  are  taught  to  dance  lithely,  the  arms 
to  execute  eloquent  gestures,  so  the  neck  should  be  trained  to 
naturally  assume  graceful  attitudes  1  Great  paintings  and  famous 
actresses  should  be  studied  from  this  point  of  view.  Always  bear 
in  mind  that  grace  of  movement  often  excels  beauty  of  form  in  the 
power  of  inspiring  Romantic  Love.  And  remember  that  any  pains 
you  take  to  acquire  grace  will  not  only  multiply  your  own  charms, 
but  will  establish  a  habit  of  graceful  movement  in  your  muscles 
which  will  be  inherited  by  your  children.  It  is  owing  to  this  cir- 
cumstance that  the  children  of  truly  refined  families  are  born  with 
an  ease,  grace,  and  dignity  of  movement  and  mien  which  it  is 
impossible  for  "  self-made "  persons  to  acquire  in  a  lifetime, 
because  they  are  not  born  with  an  inherited  talent  for  graceful 
movement 

2D 


402  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

ARM  AND  HAND 

EVOLUTION  AND  SEXUAL  DIFFERENCES 

One  of  the  redeeming  features  of  what  is  ironically  called  "full- 
dress  "  is  the  opportunity  it  gives  of  admiring  a  woman's  shapely 
neck,  shoulders,  and  arms — if  she  has  such.  No  healthy  woman 
of  the  well-to-do  classes  need  have  an  ill-favoured  arm  if  she  has 
a  sensible  mother,  who  compels  her  from  her  childhood  to  exercise 
her  muscles.  The  great  preponderance  of  leathery,  angular,  bony 
arms  at  ballrooms  shows,  therefore,  how  shamefully  the  hygienic 
arts  of  personal  adornment  are  neglected  in  our  best  society.  The 
stifling  heat  which  commonly  prevails  at  social  gatherings  suggests 
the  thought  that  many  ladies  are  indifferent  to  the  display  of  their 
bony  arms  on  the  grounds  given  in  Sydney  Smith's  exclamation : 
"  Heat,  ma'am  !  it  was  so  dreadful  here  that  I  found  there  was 
nothing  left  for  it  but  to  take  off  my  flesh  and  sit  in  my  bones." 

A  meagre,  skinny  arm  is  objectionable  not  only  because  it  offends 
against  all  the  conditions  of  Beauty — plump  roundness,  softness, 
fresh  colour,  smoothness,  gradual  tapering  to  the  wrist — but 
because  it  is  associated  with  the  aspect  of  old  age  and  disease ; 
and  again,  because  it  suggests  man's  lowly  origin  by  its  approxima- 
tion to  the  appearance  of  the  arms  in  our  simian  country  cousins. 

Man's  arm  has  become  differentiated  from  the  ape's  not  only  in 
the  matter  of  greater  muscular  rotundity  and  smoothness,  i.e.  loss 
of  hair,  but  also  in  regard  to  length.  An  ape's  arms  are  much 
longer  than  a  white  man's,  the  negro's  being  intermediate.  Says 
Mr.  Tylor :  "  In  an  upright  position  and  reaching  down  with  the 
middle  finger,  the  gibbon  can  touch  its  foot,  the  orang  its  ankle, 
the  chimpanzee  its  knee,  while  man  only  reaches  partly  down  his 
thigh.  .  .  .  Negro  soldiers  standing  at  drill  bring  the  middle 
finger-tip  an  inch  or  two  nearer  the  knee  than  white  men  can  do, 
and  some  have  been  even  known  to  touch  the  knee-pan."  Taking 
this  in  connection  with  the  fact  that  the  arms  of  sailors, 
who  use  them  constantly  in  climbing,  are  longer  than  those  of 
soldiers,  we  may  safely  infer  that  man's  arms  have  gradually 
become  shorter  because  he  has  ceased  to  climb  trees ;  while  the 
greater  muscular  rotundity,  especially  of  the  forearm,  has  been 
acquired  through  the  varied  activity  and  movements  of  the  hand 
and  fingers  :  a  circumstance  almost  self-evident  on  physiological 
principles,  and  furthermore  corroborated  by  the  fact  that  negroes, 
unskilled  in  trades  which  call  for  manipulation  of  the  separate 
fingers,  again  occupy  an  intermediate  position.  "  Even  in  muscular 


ARM  AND  HAND  403 

negroes  the  arms  are  less  rotund,"  says  Professor  Carl  Vogt ;  and, 
according  to  Van  der  Hoeven,  the  skin  between  the  fingers  reaches 
up  higher  in  the  negro,  which  must  impede  activity. 

The  peculiar  arrangement  of  the  hair  on  man's  arm  has  been 
referred  to  by  Wallace  and  Darwin  as  one  of  the  countless  signs 
arguing  our  descent  from  apelike  ancestors.  On  the  arm  of  man, 
as  of  most  anthropoid  apes,  the  hair  "  tends  to  converge  from  above 
and  below  to  a  point  at  the  elbow."  Now  it  is  known  that  the 
gorilla,  as  well  as  the  orang,  "sits  in  pelting  rain  with  his  hands 
over  his  head";  and  Mr.  Wallace,  therefore,  suggests  that  the 
present  inclination  of  the  hair  on  man's  arms  is  simply  a  survival 
of  the  time  when  his  arboreal  ancestors  used  to  sit  in  that  fashion, 
the  hair  having  gradually  assumed  the  direction  which  would  most 
easily  allow  the  rain  to  run  off. 

The  evolution  theory  that  the  hair  on  the  arm,  as  on  the  body 
in  general,  was  lost  through  Sexual  Selection,  is  corroborated  by 
the  fact  that  woman's  arm  has  made  more  progress  toward  com- 
plete smoothness  than  man's,  owing  to  the  circumstance  that  man  is 
in  Sexual  Selection  more  guided  by  aesthetic,  woman  by  dynamic, 
considerations.  Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  a  hairy  arm  and 
hand  are  always  ugly,  in  man  as  in  woman,  not  only  on  account  of 
their  simian  suggestiveness,  but  because  they  cover  the  smooth 
skin  and  its  delicate  tints,  and,  moreover,  especially  if  black,  are 
very  apt  to  make  the  arm  and  hand  look  as  if  they  needed  a  good 
scrubbing.  Hair  on  the  hand  may  sometimes  be  permanently 
removed  by  passing  the  hand  quickly  and  repeatedly  through  a 
large  flame — a  much  less  painful  process  than  the  use  of  pincers. 

The  muscular  deviations  from  the  lines  of  beauty  are  much 
more  pardonable  in  a  man's  arm  than  the  hair,  although  it  is 
evident  that  a  professional  athlete's  excessively  muscular  arm  is 
aesthetically  objectionable,  however  much  it  may  be  admired  on 
other  grounds.  To  feminine  beauty,  and  the  chances  of  inspiring 
Love,  an  arm  which  is  so  muscular  as  to  obliterate  the  lines  of 
beauty  is  absolutely  fatal.  Among  the  labouring  classes  there  are 
many  women  whose  arms  are  so  hard  and  sinewy  that  the  very 
bones  to  which  they  are  attached  have  become  heavy  and  masculine, 
so  that  it  becomes  difficult  to  tell  a  woman's  from  a  man's  skeleton, 
which  ordinarily  is  very  easy. 

CALISTHENICS  AND  MASSAGE 

It  is,  however,  hardly  necessary  to  refer  to  these  facts  as  a 
warning  to  girls  not  to  use  their  arms  too  much.  The  danger 


404  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

almost  always  lies  the  other  way,  and  what  girls  need  is  a  set  of 
intelligent  directions  for  securing  a  shapely  arm.  If  the  arm  is  too 
plump  the  method  discussed  in  preceding  pages  for  the  general 
reduction  of  corpulence  will  also  affect  the  arm.  If  too  thin,  which 
is  much  more  frequently  the  case  in  young  women,  don't  be  afraid 
that  exercise  will  make  them  thinner — on  the  ground  that  hard 
labourers  are  commonly  meagre.  It  is  only  excessive  exercise  that 
produces  leanness,  by  burning  away  all  the  fat.  Moderate  exercise 
develops  the  muscles — the  plastic  material  of  beauty — and  stimu- 
lates the  appetite,  so  that  the  fat-cushion  under  the  skin  also 
increases  in  depth,  covering  up  the  angular  outlines  of  bones, 
muscles,  and  sinews. 

It  is  a  suggestive  fact  that  the  word  calisthenics — "the  art  of 
promoting  the  health  of  the  body  by  exercise  " — comes  from  two 
Greek  words  meaning  " beautiful "  and  "strength." 

So  many  books  have  been  written  on  calisthenics  that  it  is 
needless  to  repeat  here  minute  directions  for  training  the  muscles 
of  the  arm  or  any  other  part  of  the  body.  One  bit  of  sensible 
advice  may,  however,  be  quoted  from  the  Ugly  Girl  Papers: 
"  Throwing  quoits  and  sweeping  are  good  exercises  to  develop  the 
arms.  There  is  nothing  like  three  hours  of  housework  a  day  for 
giving  a  woman  a  good  figure,  and  if  she  sleep  in  tight  cosmetic 
gloves,  she  need  not  fear  that  her  hands  will  be  spoiled.  The  time 
to  form  the  hand  is  in  youth,  and  with  thimbles  for  the  finger-tips, 
and  close  gloves  lined  with  cold  cream,  every  mother  might  secure 
a  good  hand  for  her  daughter." 

It  is  an  ill  wind  that  blows  no  man  good.  The  incessant  piano- 
banging  and  violin-scraping  of  thousands  of  unmusical  young  ladies 
has  at  least  one  thing  to  be  said  in  its  favour :  it  helps  to  round 
and  beautify  the  arms  of  these  young  players. 

Active  exercise  is  the  surest  and  quickest  way  of  securing  mus- 
cular rotundity.  But  in  cases  where,  owing  to  some  infirmity, 
long-continued  spontaneous  exertion  is  out  of  the  question,  massage, 
which  has  been  denned  as  "  passive  exercise,"  may  be  resorted  to  as 
of  calisthenic  value.  It  should  only  be  performed  by  an  expert,  and 
always  centripetally,  i.e.  in  the  direction  of  the  heart.  It  facilitates 
the  flow  of  the  venous  current,  which  in  the  arms  and  lower  limbs 
has  to  struggle  upwards  against  the  force  of  gravitation ;  and  to  this 
is  partly  due  its  refreshing  effect.  As  Americans  are  the  most 
nervous  and  sensitive  people  in  the  world,  it  seems  probable  that 
the  feeling  of  ease  following  the  facilitating  of  the  venous  flow  has 
taught  them  instinctively  to  assume  that  peculiar  position,  with  the 
feet  on  a  chair  or  table,  which  has  been  so  often  ridiculed  by  Europeans. 


ARM  AND  HAND  405 


THE  "SECOND  FACE" 

"  The  beauty  of  a  youthful  hand,"  says  Winckelmann  "  consists 
in  a  moderate  degree  of  plumpness,  and  a  scarcely  observable  de- 
pression, vesembling  a  soft  shadow,  over  the  articulations  of  the 
fingers,  where,  if  the  hand  is  plump,  there  is  a  dimple.  The  fingera 
taper  gently  towards  their  extremities,  like  finely-shaped  columns  ; 
and,  in  art,  the  articulations  are  not  expressed.  The  fore  part  of 
the  terminating  joint  is  not  bent  over,  nor  are  the  nails  very  long, 
though  both  are  common  in  the  works  of  modern  sculptors." 

Balzac  pointed  out  that  "  men  of  superior  intellect  almost  always 
have  beautiful  hands,  the  perfection  of  which  is  the  distinctive 
indication  of  a  high  destination.  .  .  .  The  hand  is  the  despair  of 
sculptors  and  painters  when  they  wish  to  express  the  changing 
labyrinth  of  its  mysterious  lineaments." 

A  fine  hand  is,  indeed,  a  sign  of  superior  intelligence  in  a  much 
more  comprehensive  sense  than  that  which  Balzac  had  in  mind. 
The  difference  between  the  simian  and  human  faces  is  hardly 
greater  than  the  progress  from  an  ape's  hand  to  a  man's  in  beauty 
of  outline,  smoothness  of  surface,  grace  of  movement,  and  varied 
utility.  The  ape's  hand  is  hairy  on  the  upper  surface,  hard  and 
callous  on  the  lower.  Except  in  climbing,  its  movements  are 
clumsy.  The  fingers  have  adapted  themselves  to  the  need  ol 
climbing,  and  have  become  permanently  bent  in  front,  so  that  when 
the  animal  goes  on  all  fours  it  cannot  walk  on  the  palm,  but  only 
on  the  bent  knuckles. 

A  step  higher  we  have  the  negro's  hands,  in  which  the  fingers 
are  less  independent  and  nimble,  and  the  palmar  fat-cushions  less 
developed  and  sensitive,  than  in  our  hands.  These  fat-cushions 
serve  to  protect  the  blood-vessels  as  well  as  the  delicate  nerves, 
which  make  the  hand  the  principal  organ  of  touch.  The  muscles 
of  the  hand  are  more  easily  and  instantaneously  obedient  to  the 
will  than  those  of  any  other  part  of  the  body,  except  those  of  the 
mouth  and  eyes  ;  and  hence  it  is  that  the  hands  are  almost  as  good 
an  index  of  a  man's  character,  habits,  and  profession  as  his  face, 
and  have  been  aptly  called  his  "  second  face." 

Division  of  labour  is  the  index  of  progress  in  the  evolution  of 
organs.  To  the  fact  that  his  feet  have  become  exclusively  adapted 
to  locomotion,  leaving  the  hands  free  to  serve  as  tools,  man  chiefly 
owes  his  superiority  to  other  animals.  For  what  would  superior 
intellect  avail  him  without  the  implements  needed  to  carry  out  its 
schemes  f  Feeling,  grasping,  handling,  writing,  sewing,  playing  an 


408  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

instrument,  squeezing,  caressing, — these  are  a  few  of  the  innumer- 
able functions  of  the  human  hand ;  while  the  ape's  is  good  for  little 
but  climbing.  The  finger  language  of  deaf  mutes  shows  to  what 
subtle  intellectual  uses  the  hands  can  be  put ;  and  as  for  emotional 
expression,  are  there  any  facial  muscles  which  can  indicate  finer 
shades  of  feeling  than  the  infinitely  varied  touch  with  which  a 
pianist  or  violinist  gives  utterance  to  every  mood  and  phase  of 
human  passion  ? 

No  wonder  that,  just  as  the  face  has  had  its  physiognomists  and 
phrenologists,  so  the  hand  its  chiromancers,  who  pretended,  by 
looking  at  its  lines,  not  only  to  read  character,  but  even  to  foretell 
one's  fate.  Books  on  this  subject  are  indeed  still  published,  which 
shows  that  the  race  of  fools  is  in  no  immediate  danger  of  extinction. 
Wrinkles  in  the  face  do  bear  some  relation  to  character  and  experi- 
ence ;  but  surely  no  one  needs  to  be  told  that  the  palmar  lines  are 
purely  accidental — caused  by  the  manner  in  which  the  skin  is  folded 
when  we  close  the  hand. 

FINGER-NAILS 

Our  nails  are  modified  claws  —  modified  to  their  advantage 
When  properly  cared  for,  they  are  one  of  the  greatest  personal 
ornaments — beginning  and  ending  as  they  do  with  a  delicate  curve, 
rounded  on  the  surface,  suffused  with  a  gentle  blush,  and  smooth 
as  ivory.  They  may  also  serve  as  a  mode  of  expression  and  index 
of  nationality,  as  seen  in  these  remarks  by  Mr.  E.  B.  Tylor:  "In 
the  Southern  United  States,  till  slavery  was  done  away  a  few  years 
ago,  the  traces  of  Negro  descent  were  noted  with  the  utmost  nicety. 
Not  only  were  the  mixed  breeds  regularly  classed  as  mulattos, 
quadroons,  and  down  to  octoroons,  but  even  where  the  mixture  was 
so  slight  that  the  untrained  eye  noticed  nothing  beyond  a  brunette 
complexion,  the  intruder,  who  had  ventured  to  sit  down  at  a  public 
dinner-table,  was  called  upon  to  show  his  hands,  and  the  African 
taint  detected  by  the  dark  tinge  at  the  root  of  the  finger-nails." 

Becker  remarks  that  among  the  ancient  Greeks  "  it  was  con- 
sidered very  unseemly  to  appear  with  nails  unpared  " ;  nor  did  the 
Greeks  consider  it  beneath  their  dignity,  like  the  Romans,  to  pare 
their  own  nails. 

The  Greeks,  being  an  aesthetic  nation,  were  guided  in  the  treat- 
ment of  their  nails  by  the  sense  of  beauty.  Elsewhere,  however, 
the  idiotic  notion  that  laziness  is  aristocratic  led-  to  a  different 
treatment  of  the  nails.  Mr.  Tylor,  in  his  Anthropology,  gives  an 
illustration  of  the  hand  of  a  Chinese  ascetic  whose  finger-nails  are 


ARM  AND  HAND  407 

five  or  six  times  as  long  as  his  fingers.  "  Long  finger-nails,"  he 
remarks,  "  are  noticed  even  among  ourselves  as  showing  that  the 
owner  does  no  manual  labour,  and  in  China  and  neighbouring 
countries  they  are  allowed  to  grow  to  a  monstrous  length  as  a 
symbol  of  nobility,  ladies  wearing  silver  cases  to  protect  them,  or 
at  least  as  a  pretence  that  they  are  there." 

Useless  hands,  with  elongated  nails,  reverting  to  a  clawlike 
character,  as  "  symbols  of  nobility  ! "  The  study  of  evolution 
throws  much  sarcastic  light  on  the  fashionable  follies  of  mankind. 

MANICTJEE   SECRETS 

According  to  the  New  York  Analyst:  "There  are  not  nearly 
as  many  secrets  in  manicure  as  people  imagine.  A  little  ammonia 
or  borax  in  the  water  you  wash  your  hands  with,  and  that  water 
just  lukewarm,  will  keep  the  skin  clean  and  soft.  A  little  oatmeal 
mixed  with  the  water  will  whiten  the  hands.  Many  people  use 
glycerine  on  their  hands  when  they  go  to  bed,  wearing  gloves  to 
keep  the  bedding  clean ;  but  glycerine  don't  agree  with  every  one. 
It  makes  some  skins  harsh  and  red.  These  people  should  rub 
their  hands  with  dry  oatmeal  and  wear  gloves  in  bed.  The  best 
preparation  for  the  hands  at  night  is  white  of  egg,  with  a  grain  of 
alum  dissolved  in  it.  ...  The  roughest  and  hardest  hands  can  be 
made  soft  and  white  in  a  month's  time  by  doctoring  them  a  little 
at  bedtime,  and  all  the  tools  you  need  are  a  nail-brush  (avoid 
metal),  a  bottle  of  ammonia,  a  box  of  powdered  borax,  and  a  little 
fine  white  sand  to  rub  the  stains  off,  or  a  cut  of  lemon.  Manicures 
use  acids  in  their  shops,  but  the  lemon  is  quite  as  good,  and  isn't 
poisonous,  while  the  acids  are." 

In  the  Ugly  Girl  Papers  the  following  recipes  are  given  : — 

"  To  give  a  fine  colour  to  the  nails,  the  hands  and  fingers  must 
be  well  lathered  and  washed  with  scented  soap ;  then  the  nails 
must  be  rubbed  with  equal  parts  of  cinnabar  and  emery,  followed 
by  oil  of  bitter  almonds.  To  take  white  specks  from  the  nails, 
melt  equal  parts  of  pitch  and  turpentine  hi  a  small  cup ;  add  to  it 
vinegar  and  powdered  sulphur.  Rub  this  on  the  nails  and  the 
specks  will  soon  disappear.  Pitch  and  myrrh  melted  together  may 
be  used  with  the  same  results." 

But,  after  all,  what  is  the  use  of  beautifying  one's  hands  as  long 
as  ladies  bow  to  the  Fashion  Fetish,  which  compels  them  to  conceal 
them  in  the  skins  of  animals  ?  To  wear  gloves  on  going  out,  as  a 
protection  against  rough  weather  and  for  the  sake  of  cleanliness,  is 
rational  enough ;  but  to  wear  them  at  social  gatheriBgs  is  almost 


408  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

as  absurd  as  the  compulsory  impenetrable  veils  of  Turkish  women •, 
for  does  not  the  hand  rank  next  to  the  face  as  an  index  of 
character  ? 

Another  stupidity  of  fashion  is  our  enforced  and  cultivat*d 
right-handedness.  Despite  the  force  of  inherited  habit,  children 
show  a  natural  inclination  toward  using  both  their  hands  equally ; 
but  they  are  constantly  scolded  and  punished,  until  they  have 
succeeded,  like  their  parents,  in  reducing  one  hand  to  a  state  of 
imbecility,  so  to  speak,  which  is  constantly  betrayed  in  awkward, 
ungraceful  action.  Practising  on  a  musical  instrument,  with 
special  attention  to  the  left  hand,  has  a  tendency  to  correct  this 
awkwardness.  Indeed,  is  there  any  part  of  the  body  that  music 
does  not  benefit  1  Dancing  to  a  Strauss  waltz  gives  elasticity  to 
the  limbs  and  grace  to  the  gait ;  singing  is  the  most  useful  kind  of 
lung-gymnastics,  and  develops  the  chest ;  a  musically-trained  ear 
modulates  the  voice  to  sweeter  expression ;  while  equally  skilled 
and  graceful  hands  are  acquired  by  practice  on  a  musical  instru- 
ment. So  that  the  word  music,  though  much  less  comprehensive 
than  among  the  ancient  Greeks,  has  lost  none  of  the  magic,  beauti-, 
fying  power  they  ascribed  to  it. 

Much  of  the  ugliness  in  the  world  is  due  to  the  neglect  of 
parents  in  properly  supervising  the  actions  of  their  children,  to 
prevent  the  formation  of  bad  habits,  which  ruin  beauty  irretrievably. 
As  an  instance  of  what  can  be  done  in  this  direction  may  be  cited 
the  following  remark  by  a  Philadelphia  surgeon  :  "  The  school-girl 
habit  of  biting  the  nails  must  be  broken  up  at  once.  If  in  chil- 
dren, rub  a  little  extract  of  quassia  on  the  finger-tips.  This  is  so 
bitter  that  they  are  careful  not  to  taste  it  twice.  Not  only  the 
nails,  but  the  whole  finger  and  hand  is  often  forfeited  by  neglect 
in  this  respect." 

By  travelling  from  the  shoulder  down  to  the  finger-tips  we  have 
apparently  interrupted  our  steady  progress  from  toe  to  tip  of  the 
body.  But  we  shall  see  in  a  moment  that  the  interruption  is  only 
apparent,  for  our  subject  leads  naturally  "  from  Hand  to  Mouth." 


JAW,  OHIN,  AND  MOUTH 

HANDS    VERSUS  JAWS 

Just  as  among  some  male  ruminants  the  growth  of  horns  as  a 
means  of  defence  has  apparently  led  to  the  disappearance  of  the 
canine  teeth,  so  man's  erect  attitude,  by  leaving  his  hands  free  to 


JAW,  CHIN,  AXD  MOUTH  409 

do  much  of  the  work  which  inferior  animals  do  with  their  jaws 
and  teeth,  has  gradually  modified  the  appearance  of  his  face, 
greatly  to  its  advantage.  "  The  early  male  forefathers  of  man," 
says  Darwin,  "  were  probably  furnished  with  great  canine  teeth ; 
but  as  they  gradually  acquired  the  habit  of  using  stones,  clubs,  or 
other  weapons,  for  fighting  with  their  enemies  or  rivals,  they 
would  use  their  jaws  and  teeth  less  and  less.  In  this  case  the 
jaws,  together  with  the  teeth,  would  become  reduced  in  size,  as  we 
may  feel  almost  sure  from  innumerable  analogous  cases."  And  in 
another  place  he  remarks :  "  As  the  prodigious  difference  between 
the  skulls  of  the  two  sexes  in  the  orang  and  gorilla  stands  in  close 
relation  with  the  development  of  the  immense  canine  teeth  in  the 
males,  we  may  infer  that  the  reduction  of  the  jaws  and  teeth  in 
the  early  progenitors  of  man  must  have  led  to  a  most  striking  and 
favourable  change  in  his  appearance." 

Why  a  "favourable"  change?  No  doubt  a  male  gorilla,  if  it 
could  be  taught  to  pronounce  an  aesthetic  judgment,  would  indig- 
nantly scout  the  notion  that  our  weak,  delicate  jaw  is  preferable 
to  its  own  massive  bones  ;  nor  would  a  prognathous  or  "  forward- 
jawed  "  African  or  Australian  admit  that  he  is  less  beautiful  than 
the  orthognathous  or  "upright-jawed"  European.  What  right, 
then,  have  we  to  claim  that  we  alone  have  beautiful  faces  ?  Must 
we  not  admit,  with  the  Jeffrey  Alison  school,  that  it  is  ull  "a 
matter  of  taste,"  and  that  in  so  far  as  a  heavy,  projecting  jaw 
appears  beautiful  to  a  gorilla  or  a  savage,  it  is  beautiful  to 
them? 

The  general  answer  to  such  questions  as  these  has  already  been 
given  in  another  part  of  this  volume.  We  need  therefore  only  say 
in  brief  resume  that  a  heavy,  projecting,  clumsy,  brutal  jaw  prob- 
ably appears  to  a  gorilla  or  a  Hottentot  neither  ugly  nor  beautiful. 
The  aesthetic  sense — as  we  can  see  among  ourselves — is  the  last 
and  highest  product  of  civilisation.  Monkeys  are  apparently 
excited  by  brilliant  colours,  but  to  beauty  of  form  neither  apes  nor 
the  lower  races  and  classes  of  man  appear  to  be  susceptible. 

Should  a  negro,  however,  on  having  his  attention  called  to  this 
matter,  claim  that  his  prognathous  face  is  more  beautiful  than  our 
orthognathous  face,  the  retort  simple  would  be  that  his  imagina- 
tion is  not  sufficiently  educated  to  understand  our  more  refined  and 
delicate  beauty ;  just  as  an  Esquimaux  prefers  a  rotten  egg  to  a 
fresh  one,  a  working  man  a  glass  of  fusil  oil  to  one  of  tokay-— 
simply  because  their  senses  of  taste  and  smell  are  not  sufficiently 
refined  to  appreciate  or  even  detect  the  delicate  flavour  of  a  fnesh 
egg  and  the  subtle  bouquet  of  wine. 


410  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Of  the  positive  tests  of  beauty,  Delicacy  is  the  one  which  most 
emphatically  condemns  the  heavy,  prognathous  jaw  and  the  accom- 
panying big  mouth.  Massive  bones  and  clumsy  movements  are 
everywhere  the  signs  of  excessive  toil,  fatal  to  beauty,  as  may  be 
seen  on  comparing  the  angular  and  almost  masculine  skeleton  of  a 
labouring  woman  with  the  delicately-articulated  joints  of  a  "  society 
woman";  or  the  heavy  structure  of  a  dray-horse  with  the  fine 
contours  of  a  race-horse ;  showing  that  Delicacy  is  always  associated 
with  the  other  elements  of  beauty — Curvature,  Gradation,  Ex- 
pression, etc. 

On  the  manner  in  which  the  beauty  of  the  mouth  is  proportioned 
to  its  capability  for  Expression,  Mr.  Euskin  has  made  the  follow- 
ing interesting  observations :  "  Taking  the  mouth,  another  source 
of  expression,  we  find  it  ugliest  where  it  has  none,  as  mostly  in 
fish ;  or  perhaps  where,  without  gaining  much  in  expression  of  any 
kind,  it  becomes  a  formidable  destructive  instrument,  as  again  in 
the  alligator ;  and  then,  by  some  increase  of  expression,  we  arrive 
at  birds'  beaks,  wherein  there  is  much  obtained  by  the  different 
ways  of  setting  on  the  mandibles  (compare  the  bills  of  the  duck 
and  the  eagle) ;  and  thence  we  reach  the  finely-developed  lips  of 
the  carnivora  (which  nevertheless  lose  their  beauty  in  the  actions 
of  snarling  and  biting) ;  and  from  these  we  pass  to  the  nobler, 
because  gentler  and  more  sensitive,  of  the  horse,  camel,  and  fawn, 
and  so  again  up  to  man :  only  the  principle  is  less  traceable  in  the 
mouths  of  the  lower  animals,  because  they  are  only  in  slight 
measure  capable  of  expression,  and  chiefly  used  as  instruments,  and 
that  of  low  function ;  whereas  in  man  the  mouth  is  given  most 
definitely  as  a  means  of  expression,  beyond  and  above  its  lower 
functions.  .  .  .  The  beauty  of  the  animal  form  is  in  exact  propor- 
tion to  the  amount  of  moral  or  intellectual  virtue  expressed 
by  it." 

Shakspere,  by  the  way,  seems  to  differ  from  Ruskin's  theory 
implied  in  this  last  sentence.  According  to  Ruskin,  animals  "  lose 
their  beauty  in  the  actions  of  snarling  and  biting."  But  man  has 
an  action  similar  to  snarling,  namely,  what  Bell  calls  "  that  arch- 
ing of  the  lips  so  expressive  of  contempt,  hatred,  and  jealousy."  It 
is  to  this  that  Shakspere  refers  in  these  lines — 

"  0  what  a  deal  of  scorn  looks  beautiful 
In  the  contempt  and  anger  of  his  lip." 

But  the  word  "  beautiful "  is  here  evidently  taken  by  Shakspere  in 
the  wider  sense  of  interesting  and  characteristic,  and  not  in  the 
special  aesthetic  sense  of  formal  and  emotional  beauty. 


JAW,  CHIN,  AND  MOUTH  411 

Delicacy  and  the  capacity  for  varied  and  subtle  Expression— 
these,  we  may  conclude,  are  the  chief  criteria  of  beauty  in  the 
lower  part  of  the  face.  Anatomically,  it  may  be  well  to  state  here, 
the  word  "  face  "  does  not  include  the  forehead,  but  only  extends 
from  the  chin  to  the  eyebrows.  The  upper  and  posterior  part  is 
called  the  cranium  or  skull.  It  seems  odd  at  first  not  to  include 
the  forehead  in  the  face,  but  there  are  scientific  grounds  for  making 
such  a  division,  for  a  discussion  of  which  the  reader  must  be 
referred  to  some  anatomical  text-book  (vide  Kollmann,  pp.  82-85). 

To  a  certain  extent  the  face  and  the  cranium  are  independent 
of  one  another  in  development  and  physiognomic  significance. 
And  it  should  be  noted  that,  contrary  to  the  general  impression,  in 
estimating  the  degree  of  intelligence  and  refinement,  the  face  is  a 
safer  guide  than  the  cranium ;  for  there  are  many  powerful  brains 
in  low  and  even  receding  foreheads,  whereas  a  large  projecting  jaw 
is  almost  invariably  a  sign  of  vulgarity  or  lack  of  delicate  feeling. 
We  do  not  find  a  dog  ugly  because  of  his  receding  forehead ;  but 
we  do  find  that  the  most  infallible  way  of  giving  a  man's  picture  a 
brutal  expression  is  by  enlarging  the  jaw  and  mouth.  It  is  the 
deadliest  weapon  of  the  caricaturist. 

What  makes  a  gorilla  so  frightfully  ugly  is  the  prominence  and 
massive  preponderance  of  his  face  over  his  cranium.  It  is  his 
monstrous  jaws,  with  their  "simply  brutal  armature"  of  teeth, 
that  give  him  such  a  repulsive  appearance.  The  gorilla's  mouth, 
as  Professor  Kollmann  remarks,  is  a  caricature  even  from  the 
animal  point  of  view.  How  much  more  delicate  and  refined  are  a 
dog's  or  cat's  jaws  and  teeth  in  comparison !  Unfortunately,  while 
man  is  a  savage,  or  when  he  relapses  into  brutal  habits,  it  is  the 
gorilla's  mouth  and  teeth  that  his  resemble,  and  not  the  cat's  or 
the  dog's. 

A  small  face  being  therefore  a  test  of  refined  beauty,  we  have 
here  another  proof  of  the  superiority  of  feminine  over  masculine 
beauty.  For  although  woman  has  a  smaller  cranium  than  man,  it 
is  larger  than  man's  relatively  to  the  face.  In  other  words,  women 
have  smaller  and  less  massive  faces  than  men,  both  absolutely  and 
relatively  to  their  size.  Kollmann,  who  is  not  an  evolutionist, 
endeavours  to  account  for  this  difference  on  the  ground  that  men 
are  more  addicted  to  the  pleasures  of  the  table  than  women.  But 
surely,  though  women  eat  less  than  men,  they  do  not  make  much 
less  use  of  their  teeth  ;  and  for  any  deficiency  in  this  respect  they 
more  than  make  up  by  the  constant  wagging  of  their  jaws  in  small- 
talk.  It  is  infinitely  more  probable  that  Darwin  is  right  in 
attributing  the  massiveness  of  the  masculine  jaws  to  the  accumu- 


412  KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

lated,  inherited  effects  of  constant  use  in  fighting  with  enemies  and 
rivals — contests  from  which  the  passive  females  have  as  a  rule 
been  exempt. 

It  is  the  assumption  by  the  hands  of  many  of  the  former 
functions  of  the  teeth  that  has  led  to  the  decrease  in  the  size  of 
the  teeth,  and,  in  consequence,  of  the  jaw-bones  to  which  they  are 
attached.  Some  writers  have  even  claimed  that  the  wisdom-teeth 
are  becoming  rudimentary,  and  will  ultimately  disappear,  because 
there  will  be  no  room  for  them  in  our  gradually  diminishing  jaws. 
We  may  feel  confident,  however,  that  if  this  reduction  in  the  size 
of  the  jaws  tended  to  go  too  far,  the  sense  of  beauty  and  Sexual 
Selection,  i.e.  Love,  would  step  in  to  arrest  the  process,  by  favour- 
ing the  survival  of  those  who  gave  their  teeth  sufficient  exercise  to 
prevent  the  lower  part  of  the  face  from  becoming  too  much  reduced 
in  size.  Our  sense  of  beauty  demands  that  the  distance  from  tip  of 
chin  to  nose  should  be  about  the  same  as  the  length  of  the  nose 
and  the  height  of  the  forehead.  Should  these  proportions  be 
violated,  Love  will  restore  the  balance  ;  for  no  lover  would  ever 
select  a  face  in  which  the  chin  almost  touches  the  nose,  as  in 
infants,  whose  teeth  and  jaws  are  not  yet  developed,  or  as  in  old 
men  and  women,  in  whom  the  loss  of  the  teeth  has  led  to  a 
collapse  of  the  jaws,  resulting  in  a  loss  of  proportion,  clumsy  move- 
ments, and  prognathism. 

DIMPLES   IN   THE   CHIN 

An  oval,  well-rounded  chin  is  one  of  the  most  important  ele- 
ments of  formal  beauty,  and  is  a  characteristic  trait  of  humanity ; 
for  man  is  the  only  animal  that  has  a  chin.  Lavater  distinguishes 
three  principal  varieties  of  chin :  the  receding  chin,  which  is 
peculiar  to  lower  races  and  types  ;  the  chin  which  does  not  project 
beyond  a  line  dropped  from  the  lips;  and  the  chin  which  does 
project  beyond  that  line.  Of  all  parts  of  the  face  the  chin  has  the 
least  variety  of  form  and  capability  of  emotional  expression. 
Physiognomists  have  expended  much  ingenuity  in  attempting  to 
trace  a  connection  between  various  forms  of  the  chin  and  traits  of 
character ;  but  their  generalisations  have  no  scientific  value.  It  is 
probable  that  often  a  very  small,  weak  chin  indicates  weak  desires 
and  a  vacillating  character,  while  an  energetic  chin,  like  Richard 
Wagner's,  indicates  the  iron  will  of  a  reformer.  But  the  connec- 
tion between  the  development  of  the  brain  and  special  modifications 
of  the  bones  of  the  chin  is  too  remote  to  permit  a  safe  inference  in 
individual  cases. 


JAW,  CHIN,  AND  MOUTH  413 

In  ancient  Egyptian  art,  as  Winckelmann  points  out,  "  the  chin 
is  always  somewhat  small  and  receding,  whereby  the  oval  of  the 
face  becomes  imperfect." 

One  of  the  most  essential  conditions  of  beauty  in  a  chin,  if  we 
niay  judge  by  the  descriptions  of  novelists,  is  a  dimple.  Yet  it  is 
doubtful  whether  a  dimple  can  ever  be  accepted  as  a  special  mark 
of  beauty.  Temporary  dimples  (for  the  production  of  which  there 
seems  to  be  a  special  muscle)  are  interesting  as  a  mode  of  transient 
emotional  expression.  But  permanent  dimples  interrupt  the 
regular  gradation  of  the  beauty-curve,  and  too  often  indicate  that 
the  plump  roundness,  so  fascinating  in  a  woman's  face,  has  passed 
the  line  which  indicates  corpulence  and  obliterates  the  delicate 
lines  of  expression. 

Dimples  occur  not  only  in  the  chin,  but  also  in  the  cheek,  at 
the  elbow-joints,  on  the  back,  and  in  plump  female  hands  at  the 
knuckles.  They  are  caused  by  a  dense  tissue  of  fibres,  blood- 
vessels, and  nerves  holding  down  the  skin  tightly  in  one  place,  and 
thus  preventing  such  an  accumulation  of  fat  between  the  skin  and 
muscles  as  is  seen  in  the  surrounding  parts. 

Tommaseo  (quoted  by  Mantegazza)  probably  had  in  mind  the 
connection  between  corpulence  and  mental  indolence  when  he  said 
that  "  a  dimple  in  the  chin  indicates  more  physical  than  mental 
grace." 

"  As  a  dimple — by  the  Greeks  termed  vvfji<j>r) — is  an  isolated 
and  somewhat  accidental  adjunct  to  the  chin,  it  was  not,"  says 
Winckelmaun,  "  regarded  by  the  Greek  artists  as  an  attribute  of 
abstract  and  pure  beauty,  though  it  is  so  considered  by  modern 
writers."  With  a  few  unimportant  exceptions,  it  is  not  found  in 
"  any  beautiful  ideal  figure  which  has  come  down  to  us."  And 
although  Varro  prettily  calls  a  dimple  in  a  statue  of  Bathyllus  an 
impress  from  the  finger  of  Cupid,  Winckelmann  thinks  that  when 
dimples  do  occur  in  Greek  art  works  they  must  be  attributed  to  a 
conscious  deviation  from  the  highest  principles  of  art  for  the  sake 
of  personal  portraiture.  "In  images  whose  beauties  were  of  a 
lofty  cast,  the  Greek  artists  never  allowed  a  dimple  to  break  the 
uniformity  of  the  chin's  surface.  Its  beauty,  indeed,  consists  in 
tha  rounded  fulness  of  its  arched  form,  to  which  the  lower  lip, 
when  full,  imparts  additional  size." 

KEFINED  LIPS 

Whereas  the  beauty  of  the  chin  is  purely  physical,  its  neigh- 
boui,  the  mouth,  has  the  emotional  charm  of  expression  besides  the 


414  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

formal  beauty  of  outline.  When  we  come  to  speak  of  the  ears  we 
shall  find  that  some  animals  have  five  times  as  many  muscles  as 
man,  wherewith  they  can  execute  expressive  movements  with  those 
organs.  But  in  the  number  and  delicacy  of  the  muscles  of  the 
mouth  no  animal  approaches  man,  in  whom  they  are  more  numer- 
ous even  than  those  which  serve  for  the  varied  expression  of  the 
eyes.  Great  as  is  the  difference  between  an  animal's  forefoot  and 
man's  hand,  it  is  not  so  great  as  the  difference  between  an  animal's 
and  a  man's  mouth.  Chewing  and  sucking  are  almost  the  only 
functions  of  the  animal's  mouth,  while  man  moulds  his  lips  into  a 
thousand  shapes  in  singing,  whistling,  pouting,  blowing,  speaking, 
smiling,  kissing,  etc.  From  being  a  mere  mechanism  for  masticat- 
ing food,  it  has  become  the  most  delicate  instrument  for  intellectual 
and  emotional  expression. 

Sir  Charles  Bell's  testimony  that  "the  lips  are,  of  all  the 
features,  the  most  susceptible  of  action,  and  the  most  direct  index  of 
the  feelings,"  has  already  been  quoted  in  the  chapter  on  Kissing. 
Could  Rubinstein  himself  express  a  wider  range  of  emotions,  by 
subtle  variations  of  pianistic  touch,  than  our  lips  can  express 
degrees  and  varieties  of  affection  in  the  family,  friendly,  conjugal, 
and  love  kisses  ?  And  can  we  find,  even  in.  the  music  of  Chopin 
and  Wagner,  harmonic  changes  more  infinitely  varied  than  the 
countless  subtle  modulations  of  the  human  lips,  as  revealed  in  the 
fact  that  deaf  mutes  can  be  taught  to  understand  what  we  say  to 
them  merely  by  watching  the  movements  of  our  lips  1 

"The  mouth,  which  is  the  end  of  love"  (Dante),  is  also  the 
seat  of  Love's  smiles ;  "  and  in  her  smile  Love's  image  you  may 
see."  We  often  read  of  smiling  eyes,  and  the  eyes  do  partake  in 
the  expression  of  smiling,  by  increased  brightness  and  the  wrinkling 
of  the  surrounding  muscles.  But  that  the  mouth  is  a  more 
important  factor  in  this  expression  can  be  shown  by  painting  the 
face  of  a  man  with  a  sad  expression,  and  then  pasting  on  a  smiling 
mouth,  which  will  give  the  man  at  once  a  happy  expression,  not- 
withstanding the  unchanged  eyes.  In  life  the  muscles  of  the 
mouth  and  eyes  execute  certain  movements  in  harmony.  "  In  all 
exhilarating  emotions,"  says  Bell,  "  the  eyebrows,  the  eyelids,  the 
nostril,  and  the  angle  of  the  mouth  are  raised.  In  the  depressing 
emotions  it  is  the  reverse." 

For  the  execution  of  these  diverse  movements,  which  make  it 
the  most  expressive  organ  of  the  body,  the  mouth  employs  more 
than  a  dozen  important  groups  of  muscles,  some  of  which  originate 
in  the  chin,  some  in  the  cheeks,  some  in  the  lips  themselves, 
enabling  them  to  execute  independent  movements. 


JAW,  CHIN,  AND  MOUTH  415 

While  surpassing  the  eyes  in  expressiveness,  the  mouth  rivals 
them  in  beauty  of  form  and  colour.  "  The  lips  answer  the  pur- 
pose of  displaying  a  more  brilliant  red  than  is  to  be  seen  elsewhere," 
says  Winckelmann.  "  The  under  lips  should  be  fuller  than  the 
upper."  In  Greek  divinities  the  lips  are  not  always  closed  :  "  and 
this  is  especially  the  case  with  Venus,  in  order  that  her  countenance 
may  express  the  languishing  softness  of  desire  and  love."  At  the 
same  time,  "very  few  of  the  figures  which  have  been  represented 
laughing,  as  some  Satyrs  or  Fauns  are,  show  the  teeth."  This  is 
natural  enough,  for  the  long-continued  exposure  of  the  teeth  would 
only  result  in  a  grimace.  It  is  only  in  the  transient  smile  that 
the  teeth  may  peep  forth;  and  then  what  a  charming  contrast 
their  ivory  curve  and  lustrous  colour  presents  to  the  full-blooded, 
soft,  pink  lips ! 

"  Lilies  married  to  the  rose, 

Have  made  Tier  cheek  the  nuptial  bed  ; 

Her  lips  betray  their  virgin  red, 

As  they  only  blushed  for  this, 

That  they  one  another  kiss." 

Health,  Beauty,  and  Love — everywhere  we  see  them  insepar- 
ably associated.  Who  could  ever  fall  in  love  with  a  pair  of  thin, 
pallid  lips  that  have  lost  their  pink  and  plump  loveliness  through 
ansemic  indolence,  or  disease,  or  tight  lacing?  The  very  teeth, 
though  the  hardest  substance  of  the  body,  lose  their  natural  colour 
and  beauty  in  ill-health.  Not  only  do  they  decay  and  become 
blackish,  but  "  in  bilious  people  they  become  yellow,  and  in  con- 
sumptive patients  they  show  occasionally  an  unnaturally  pearly 
and  translucent  whiteness  "  (Brinton  and  Napheys). 

Negroes  have,  normally,  teeth  of  a  dazzling  whiteness,  which 
is  often  regarded  as  a  racial  peculiarity,  but  is  due,  according  to 
Waitz,  to  the  use  of  chalk  or  vegetal  fibres.  But  various  savages 
are  dissatisfied  with  the  natural  form  and  colour  of  their  teeth, 
and  disfigure  them  in  various  ways.  "  In  different  countries  the 
teeth  are  stained  black,  red,  blue,  etc.,  and  in  the  Malay  Archi- 
pelago it  is  thought  shameful  to  have  teeth  like  those  of  a  dog  " 
(Darwin). 

"  In  Macassar  the  women  spend  a  part  of  the  day  in  painting 
their  teeth  red  and  yellow,  in  such  a  way  that  a  red  tooth  follows 
a  yellow  one,  and  alternately."  In  Japan,  Fashion  compels 
married  women  to  blacken  their  teeth,  not,  however,  as  an  orna- 
ment, but  to  make  them  ugly  and  save  them  from  temptation. 

Some  African  tribes  knock  out  two  or  more  of  their  front 
teeth,  on  the  ground  that  they  do  not  wish  to  look  like  brutes. 


41G  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

The  Batokas  "  think  the  presence  of  incisors  most  unsightly,  and  on 
beholding  some  Europeans,  cried  out, '  Look  at  the  great  teeth  ! '  .  .  . 
In  various  parts  of  Africa,  and  in  the  Malay  Archipelago,  the 
natives  file  the  incisors  into  points  like  those  of  a  saw,  or  pierce 
them  with  holes,  into  which  they  insert  studs." 

In  case  of  the  lips,  primitive  Fashion  prescribes  still  more 
atrocious  mutilations.  One  would  think  that  a  negro's  swollen 
lips  were  ugty  euough  to  suit  even  a  devotee  of  African  Fashion  ; 
but  no !  Her  lips  being  naturally  large,  the  fashionable  negro 
belle  considers  it  incumbent  on  her  to  exaggerate  them  into 
additional  hideousness,  just  as  European  and  American  fashionable 
women  exaggerate  the  slight  and  beautiful  natural  curve  of  their 
waist  into  the  atrocious  hour-glass  shape. 

"Among  the  Babines,  who  live  north  of  the  Columbia  River," 
says  Sir  John  Lubbock,  "  the  size  of  the  under  lip  is  the  standard 
of  female  beauty.  A  hole  is  made  in  the  under  lip  of  the  infant, 
in  which  a  small  bone  is  inserted ;  from  time  to  time  the  bone  is 
replaced  by  a  larger  one,  until  at  last  a  piece  of  wood,  three  inches 
long  and  an  inch  and  a  half  wide,  is  inserted  in  the  orifice,  which 
makes  the  lip  protrude  to  a  frightful  extent.  The  process  appears 
to  be  very  painful." 

"  In  Central  Africa,"  says  Darwin,  "  the  women  perforate  the 
lower  lip  and  wear  a  crystal,  which,  from  the  movement  of  the 
tongue,  has  *a  wriggling  motion,  indescribably  ludicrous  during 
conversation.'  The  wife  of  the  chief  of  Latooka  told  Sir  S.  Baker 
that  Lady  Baker  '  would  be  much  improved  if  she  would  extract 
her  four  front  teeth  from  the  lower  jaw,  and  wear  the  long  pointed 
polished  crystal  in  her  under  lip.'  Further  south,  with  the 
Makalolo,  the  upper  lip  is  perforated,  and  a  large  metal  and 
bamboo  ring,  called  a  pelele,  is  worn  in  the  hole.  This  caused  the 
lip  to  project  in  one  point  two  inches  beyond  the  tip  of  the  nose  ; 
and  when  the  lady  smiled,  the  contraction  of  the  muscles  elevated 
it  over  the  eyes.  *  Why  do  the  women  wear  these  things  1, '  the 
venerable  chief  Chinsurdi  was  asked.  Evidently  surprised  at  such 
a  stupid  question,  he  replied,  '  For  beauty !  They  are  the  only 
beautiful  things  women  have ;  men  have  beards,  women  have 
none.  What  kind  of  a  person  would  she  be  without  a  pelele  ? 
She  would  not  be  a  woman  at  all,  with  a  mouth  like  a  man  but 
no  beard.' " 

In  New  Zealand,  according  to  Tylor,  "it  was  considered 
shameful  for  a  woman  not  to  have  her  mouth  tattooed,  for  people 
would  say  with  disgust,  *  She  has  red  lips.' " 

Compare  these  two  pictures  for  a  moment :  on  the  one  side, 


JAW,  CHIN,  AND  MOUTH  417 

the  protuberant  mouth-borders  of  the  negro  woman,  swollen  as  by 
disease  or  an  insect's  sting,  enlarged,  in  smiling,  to  the  very  ears, 
and  showing  not  only  the  teeth  but  the  gums,  the  tongue  and  the 
unsesthetic  oesophagus ;  on  the  other  side,  the  full  but  delicate 
cherry  lips  of  civilised  woman,  capable  of  an  infinite  variety  of 
subtle,  graceful  movements,  a  keyboard  on  which  the  whole  gamut 
of  human  feelings  finds  expression,  and  revealing,  in  a  smile,  only 
the  tips  of  the  pearly,  undeformed  teeth.  Shall  we  say,  with 
Alison  and  Jeffrey,  that  it  is  all  a  matter  of  taste,  and  that  the 
negro  has  as  much  right  to  his  taste  as  we  have  to  ours  ?  Or 
have  we  not  plentiful  reasons  for  claiming  that  Personal  Beauty 
is  a  fine  art,  and  that  the  reason  why  the  negro  prefers  his  coarse 
mouth  to  our  refined  lips  is  because  he  does  not  understand  our 
highly-developed  and  specialised  Beauty  ? 

There  are  cogent  scientific  reasons  for  believing  that,  just  as 
the  skull  has  been  modified  and  developed  from  the  upper  part  of 
the  spinal  column,  and  the  brain  from  its  contents,  so  ihe  facial 
muscles  are  all  developed  from  the  broad  muscle  of  the  neck.  In 
the  orang,  according  to  Professor  Owen,  we  find  already  all  the 
important  facial  muscles  which  man  uses  to  express  emotions. 
But,  as  Darwin  remarks,  "  distinct  uses,  independently  of  expres- 
sion, can  ...  be  assigned  with  much  probability  for  almost  all 
the  facial  muscles." 

On  the  other  hand,  the  facial  muscles  "  are,  as  is  admitted  by 
every  one  who  has  written  on  the  subject,  very  variable  in 
structure ;  and  Moreau  remarks  that  they  are  hardly  alike  in  half 
a  dozen  subjects.  They  are  also  variable  in  function.  Thus  the 
power  of  uncovering  the  canine  tooth  on  one  side  differs  much  in 
different  persons.  The  power  of  raising  the  wings  of  the  nostrils 
is  also,  according  to  Dr.  Piderit,  variable  in  a  remarkable  degree ; 
and  other  such  cases  could  be  given." 

The  facts  that  the  facial  muscles  blend  so  much  together  that 
their  number  has  been  variously  estimated  at  from  nineteen  to 
fifty-five,  and  that  they  vary  so  much  in  details  of  structure  and 
function  in  individuals,  are  of  extreme  significance.  For,  in  the 
first  place,  this  variableness  allows  Love — or  Sexual  Selection — 
to  favour  the  survival  of  those  modifications  of  the  features  which 
are  most  in  harmony  with  the  laws  of  Beauty ;  and,  secondly,  it 
affords  the  means  of  further  specialisation  and  increased  accuracy 
in  the  modes  of  emotional  expression. 

When  we  see  a  friend  reading  a  letter,  we  fancy  his  face  a 
perfect  mirror,  reflecting  every  mood  touched  upon  in  its  contents. 
Yet  many  of  our  expressions  are  vague,  and  there  is  much  room 


418  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

for  improvement  in  definiteness.  Darwin,  in  the  introduction  to 
his  work  on  the  Expression  of  Emotions  in  Man  and  Animals, 
has  remarked  how  difficult  it  often  is  to  name  the  exact  emotion 
intended  to  be  expressed  in  a  picture  of  a  man,  unless  we  regard 
the  accessories  by  which  the  painter  illustrates  the  situation ;  and 
how  apt  people  are  to  disagree  in  naming  the  emotions  expressed 
by  a  series  of  physiognomic  portraits.  With  monkeys,  he  says, 
"  the  expression  of  slight  pain,  or  of  any  painful  emotion,  such  as 
grief,  vexation,  jealousy,  etc.,  is  not  easily  distinguished  from  that 
of  moderate  anger." 

Savages,  as  we  saw  in  a  previous  chapter,  are  strangers  to 
many  of  the  tender  emotions  which  enter  into  our  daily  life ;  hence 
it  would  be  absurd  to  look  for  muscles  specially  trained  to  express 
them.  And  even  with  Europeans  the  refined  emotions  are  of 
such  recent  development  that,  as  just  stated,  they  are  capable  of 
much  further  specialisation.  To  take  only  one  case :  it  is  probable 
that,  whereas  in  the  present  stage  of  human  evolution,  it  is  almost 
impossible,  without  accessories,  to  distinguish  the  facial  expression 
of  feminine  Romantic  Love  from  that  of  maternal  love,  future 
generations  will  have  specially  modified  muscles  for  those  modes  of 
expression.  Duchenne  has  pointed  out  on  the  side  of  the  nose  a 
series  of  transient  folds  expressive  of  amorous  desire.  As 
Romantic  Love  displaces  coarse  passion,  may  not  these  or  another 
set  of  muscles  be  pressed  into  the  special  service  of  refined  Love 
as  a  sign  of  encouragement  to  lovers  about  to  propose  1  Coquettes, 
of  course,  would  immediately  cultivate  this  expression,  as  a  new 
wile  or  "  wrinkle."  / 

Between  the  facial  muscles  that  are  thus  utilised  for  the 
expression  of  emotions  and  other  muscles  of  the  body,  there  is  one 
difference  which  is  of  the  utmost  importance  from  the  point  of 
view  of  Personal  Beauty.  The  function  of  ordinary  muscles  is  to 
move  bones,  whereas  the  muscles  of  expression  in  the  face  are 
only  concerned  with  the  movements  of  the  skin.  Hence  they  do 
not  enlarge  the  bones  of  the  face,  which  would  destroy  its  delicacy. 
Their  exercise  gives  elasticity  and  plump  roundness  to  the  outlines 
of  the  face ;  and  as  they  are  subtly  subdivided  in  function,  they 
cannot  easily  become  too  plump  from  exercise. 

Individual  peculiarities  of  expression  are  of  course  due  to  the 
frequent  exercise  of  certain  sets  of  muscles,  leading  gradually  to  a 
fixed  physiognomic  aspect ;  for  form  is  merely  crystallised  expres- 
sion. Hence  no  one  can  be  beautiful  without  being  good.  Vice 
soon  destroys  Personal  Beauty.  If  the  muscles  of  anger,  envy, 
jealousy,  spite,  cruelty,  etc.,  are  too  frequently  called  into  exercise, 


JAW,  CHIN,  AND  MOCTH  419 

the  result  is  a  face  on  which  the  word  vicious  is  written  as  legibly 
and  in  as  many  corners  as  the  numerals  X  and  10  are  printed  on 
a  United  States  banknote. 

One  of  the  reasons  why  Fashion  encourages  the  blase,  nil  ad- 
mirari  attitude,  and  the  stolid  suppression  of  emotional  expression, 
is  to  hide  these  signs  of  moral  and  hygienic  sins. 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  anatomist  and  poet,  says  of  Emerson 
that  he  had  "that  look  of  refinement  centring  about  the  lips 
which  is  rarely  found  in  the  male  New  Englander,  unless  the 
family  features  have  been  for  two  or  three  cultivated  generations 
the  battlefield  and  the  playground  of  varied  thoughts  and  complex 
emotions,  as  well  as  the  sensuous  and  nutritive  port  of  entry." 

Dr.  Holmes  need  not  have  limited  his  generalisation  to  "  male 
New  Englanders."  Refined  mouths  are  rare  in  every  country, 
among  women  as  well  as  among  men.  As  a  writer  in  the  Victoria 
Magazine  exclaims  :  "  It  is  wonderful  how  far  more  common  good 
foreheads  and  eyes  are  amongst  us  than  good  mouths  and  chins." 
Yet  there  is  a  special  reason  for  singling  out  the  average  male 
New  Englander  as  a  "  warning  example."  He  inherits  the  thin, 
famished,  pale,  stern,  forbidding  lips  of  his  Puritan  ancestors, 
whose  sins  are  thus  visited  on  later  generations.  Sins?  Yes, 
sins  against  health.  Without  cheerfulness  there  can  be  no  sound 
health,  and  the  Puritans  made  the  systematic  pursuit  of  unhappi- 
ness  the  chief  object  of  their  life.  They  made  cruel  war  on  all 
those  innocent  pursuits  and  amusements  which  bring  the  bloom  of 
health  and  beauty  to  the  youthful  cheek,  and  exercise  the  lips  in 
the  expression  of  refined  aesthetic  emotion.  Even  music,  the  most 
innocent  of  the  arts,  was  included  in  their  fanatic  ostracism,  to 
which  historians  also  trace  the  rarity  of  musical  taste  of  the  highest 
order  in  England. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  it  is  especially  aesthetic  culture 
which  betrays  itself  in  the  refined  contours  and  expression  of  the 
lips.  Men  of  genius,  though  their  cast  of  features  is  not  always 
handsome,  commonly  have  finely -cut  mouths.  Among  German 
women  addicted  to  music  and  love  of  nature,  though  beauty  is 
comparatively  rare — owing  to  causes  which  will  be  considered  in 
a  later  chapter — good  mouths  are  more  common  than  in  some 
other  countries  which  boast  a  higher  general  average  of  Personal 
Beauty.  Among  Americans  in  general,  all  the  features  are  apf-  to 
be  finely  cut,  hence  the  lips  also  partake  of  this  advantage. 

But  it  is  among  Spanish  maidens  that  perhaps  the  most  invit- 
ing, full-blooded  yet  delicate,  soft,  and  refined  lips  are  to  be  sought. 
True,  the  Spanish  maiden  seems  to  lack  refined  feelings  when  slie 


420  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

goes,  as  commonly  supposed,  to  be  thrilled  by  a  bull  fight.  Yet  it 
is  well  known  that  the  upper  classes  of  women  in  Spain  do  not 
commonly  attend  these  spectacles ;  and  if  they  did,  would  they 
be  more  cruel  than  our  fashionable  women  1  Which  is  the  more 
glaring  evidence  of  callous  emotions,  to  voluntarily  witness  the 
slaughter  of  an  infuriated,  dangerous  beast,  or  to  wear  on  one's 
hat  the  painted  corpses  of  innocent  song-birds  ? 

The  following  passage  in  one  of  Washington  Irving's  works 
shows  that  the  Spanish  have  genuine  aesthetic  feeling  and  taste  : — 

"  *  How  near  the  Sierra  looks  this  evening  ! '  said  Mateo  ;  *  it 
seems  as  if  you  could  touch  it  with  your  hand,  and  yet  it  is  many 
leagues  off.'  While  he  was  speaking  a  star  appeared  over  the 
snowy  summit  of  the  mountain,  the  only  one  yet  visible  in  the 
heavens,  and  so  pure,  so  large,  so  bright  and  beautiful  as  to  call 
forth  ejaculations  of  delight  from  honest  Mateo. 

"  '  Que  lucero  hermoso  ! — que  clara  y  limpio  es  ! — no  pueda  ser 
lucero  mas  brillante.'  (What  a  beautiful  star !  how  clear  and 
lucid  ! — no  star  could  be  more  brilliant !) 

"  I  have  often  remarked  this  sensibility  of  the  common  people 
of  Spain  to  the  charms  of  natural  objects.  The  lustre  of  a  star — 
the  beauty  or  fragrance  of  a  flower — the  crystal  purity  of  a  foun- 
tain, will  inspire  them  with  a  kind  of  poetical  delight — and  then 
what  euphonious  words  their  magnificent  language  affords  with 
which  to  give  utterance  to  their  transports  ! " 

Possibly  the  constant  pronouncing  of  these  "  euphonious  words" 
is  one  of  the  causes  of  the  beauty  of  Spanish  lips.  But  one  need 
not  go  into  such  subtle  details  for  an  explanation  of  the  pheno- 
menon. Sexual  Selection  accounts  for  it  sufficiently.  The  admira- 
tion of  Beauty  is  the  strongest  factor  in  Romantic  Love.  The 
Spaniard's  sense  of  Beauty  is  refined  through  his  love  of  Beauty 
in  natural  objects.  Hence  in  Sexual  Selection  he  is  guided  by  a 
taste  which  abhors  equally  the  coarse,  protuberant  lips  suggestive 
of  mere  animality,  and  the  leathery,  lifeless  lips  indicating  neglect 
of  the  laws  of  health  and  a  lack  of  lusty  vitality.  For  true  labial 
refinement  consists  not  in  ascetic  elimination  of  sensuous  fulness, 
but  in  aesthetic  harmony  between  sense  and  intellect.  The  lips, 
like  all  other  parts  of  the  body,  are  naturally  plump  and  full- 
blooded  in  Southern  nations,  saturated  with  sunshine  and  fresh  air ; 
and  when  this  plumpness  is  checked  by  mental  refinement  and  the 
exigencies  of  varied  expression,  then  it  is  that  lips  become  ideally 
beautiful. 

It  is  with  the  lips  as  with  Love,  of  which  they  are  the  perch. 
Neither  Zola  nor  Dante  are  the  true  painters  of  the  romantic 


JAW,  CHIN,  AND  MOUTH  421 

passion,  but  Shakspere,  who  pays  respect  to  flesli  and  blood  as 
well  as  to  emotion  aud  intellect. 


COSMETIC   HINTS 

Although  the  size  and  shape  of  the  lips  afford  an  index  of 
coarse  or  refined  ancestry,  the  mouth  is  commonly  the  most  self- 
made  feature  in  the  countenance,  because  it  is  such  an  important 
seat  of  individual  expression.  Herein  lies  a  soothing  balm  to 
those  who,  owing  to  the  stupidly  irregular  and  incalculable  laws 
of  heredity,  have  inherited  an  ugly  mouth  from  a  grandfather  or 
a  more  remote  ancestor. 

A  pleasing  impression,  oft  repeated,  leaves  its  traces  on  the 
facial  muscles.  Kant  gives  this  advice  to  parents :  "  Children, 
especially  girls,  must  be  accustomed  early  to  smile  in  a  frank, 
unconstrained  manner ;  for  the  cheerfulness  and  animation  of  the 
features  gradually  leave  an  impression  en  the  mind  itself,  and  thus 
create  a  disposition  towards  gaiety,  amiableness,  and  sociability, 
which  lay  an  early  foundation  for  the  virtue  of  benevolence." 

So  Kant  evidently  believed  that  we  can  beautify  the  soul  by 
beautifying  the  body.  And  the  reverse  is  equally  true.  As  Mr. 
Ruskin  remarks  :  "  There  is  not  any  virtue  the  exercise  of  which, 
even  momentarily,  will  not  impress  a  new  fairness  upon  the  features. 
...  On  the  gentleness  and  decision  of  just  feeling  there  follows  a 
grace  of  action  which  by  no  discipline  may  be  taught  or  obtained." 

If  educators  and  parents  would  thoroughly  impress  on  the 
minds  of  the  young  the  great  truth  that  good  moral  behaviour 
and  the  industry  which  leads  to  intellectual  pre-eminence  are  magic 
sources  of  youthful  and  permanent  Personal  Beauty,  they  would  find 
it  the  most  potent  of  all  civilising  agencies,  especially  with  women. 

Drs.  Brinton  and  Napheys,  in  their  work  on  Personal  Beauty 
(1870),  which  is  especially  valuable  from  the  point  of  view  of 
medical  and  surgical  cosmetics,  but  which  is  unfortunately  out  of 
print,  offer  the  following  suggestions  as  to  how  the  shape  and 
expression  of  the  mouth  may  be  improved  : — 

"For  cosmetic  reasons,  immoderate  laughter  is  objectionable. 
It  keeps  the  muscles  on  the  stretch,  destroys  the  contour  of  the 
features,  and  produces  wrinkles.  It  is  better  to  cultivate  a 
'  classic  repose/ 

"Still  more  decidedly  should  the  habit  of  'making  mouths' 
be  condemned,  whether  it  occur  in  conversing  in  private  or  to 
express  emotions.  It  never  adds  to  the  emphasis  of  the  discourse, 
never  improves  the  looks,  and  leads  to  actual  malformations. 


422  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

"  Children  sometimes  learn  to  suck  and  bite  their  lips.  This 
distorts  these  organs,  and  unless  they  are  persuaded  to  give  it  up 
betimes,  a  permanent  deformity  will  arise. 

"  When  the  lips  have  once  assumed  a  given  form,  it  is  difficult 
to  change  them.  Those  that  are  too  thin  can  occasionally  be 
increased  by  adopting  the  plan  of  sucking  them.  This  forces  a 
large  quantity  of  blood  to  the  part,  and  consequently  a  greater 
amount  of  nutriment.  When  too  large,  compresses  can  sometimes, 
but  not  always,  be  used  to  effect.  We  have  employed  silver  plates 
connected  by  a  wire  spring,  or  a  mould  of  stiff  leather.  Either 
may  be  worn  at  night,  or  in  the  house  during  the  day." 

Jt  is  astonishing  to  note  how  many  persons  are  utterly  uncon- 
cerned regarding  the  appearance  of  their  mouths  in  talking,  smiling, 
and  laughing,  sometimes  revealing  the  whole  of  the  teeth  and  even 
the  gums,  like  savages,  or  as  if  they  were  walking  tooth-powder 
advertisements.  Self-observation  before  a  mirror  is  the  best  anti- 
dote against  such  grimaces. 

Chapped  lips  sometimes  call  for  constitutional  treatment,  but 
ordinarily  they  can  be  easily  cured  by  obtaining  a  lip-salve  of  some 
reputable  chemist.  Glycerine  is  almost  always  adulterated  and 
injurious,  and  should  only  be  used  on  any  part  of  the  skin  when 
chemically  pure. 

Pale  lips  are  commonly  an  indication  of  ill-health,  and  there- 
fore call  for  exercise,  tonics,  or  other  medical  treatment.  And  the 
colour  of  the  lips  is  an  index  of  emotion  as  well  as  of  health — 

41  Whispering,  with  white  lips,  '  The  foe  !  They  come  !  They  come  1 ' " 
— BYKON. 

That  sound  teeth,  though  they  should  never  be  seen  except  in 
glimpses,  are  an  extremely  important  element  in  facial  beauty, 
may  be  seen  by  the  fact  that  the  loss  of  a  few  front  teeth  makes 
a  person  look  ten  years  older  at  once.  The  art  of  dentistry  has 
reached  such  marvellous  perfection  that  there  is  no  excuse  for 
having  unsightly  teeth.  They  may  be  easily  preserved  to  a  good 
age,  if  properly  exercised  on  solid  food — bread  crusts,  etc.  Very 
hot  and  very  cold  food  and  drink  is  injurious,  especially  if  cold 
and  hot  things  are  taken  in  immediate  succession.  The  teeth 
should  be  cleaned  twice  a  day,  on  rising  and  before  retiring.  The 
brush  should  not  be  too  hard,  and  a  harmless  powder,  wash,  or 
soap  should  be  obtained  of  a  trustworthy  chemist  for  the  threefold 
purpose  of  whitening  the  teeth  by  removing  tartar,  of  killing  the 
numerous  microbes  in  the  mouth,  and  purifying  the  breath.  An 
offensive  breath  is  shockingly  common,  probably  owing  to  the  fact 


THE  CHEEKS  423 

that  many  brush  only  the  outside  surface  of  their  teeth.  They 
should  be  brushed  inside  as  well,  and  on  the  top,  and  the  tooth 
wash  or  soap  should  be  brought  into  contact  with  every  corner 
and  crevasse  of  the  mouth  and  teeth.  An  offensive  breath  ought 
to  be  good  cause  for  divorce,  and  certainly  it  is  a  deadly  enemy  of 
Koinantic  Love. 


THE  CHEEKS 

HIGH   CHEEK-BONES 

When  we  look  at  a  Mongolian,  the  flat  nose  and  oblique  eyes 
at  once  attract  our  attention,  but  hardly  to  such  a  degree  as  his 
high  and  prominent  cheek-bones.  The  North  American  Indians, 
who  are  probably  the  descendants  of  Mongolians,  resemble  them 
in  their  prominent  cheek-bones  ;  and  the  Esquimaux  likewise 
possess  these  in  a  most  exaggerated  form.  "  The  Siamese,"  says 
Darwin,  "  have  small  noses  with  divergent  nostrils,  a  wide  mouth, 
rather  thick  lips,  a  remarkably  large  face,  with  very  high  and 
broad  cheek-bones.  It  is  therefore  not  wonderful  that  '  beauty, 
according  to  our  notion,  is  a  stranger  to  them.  Yet  they  con- 
sider their  own  females  to  be  much  more  beautiful  than  those  of 
Europe.' " 

Here  is  another  "  matter  of  taste,"  which  is  decided  in  our 
favour  by  the  general  laws  of  Beauty,  positive  and  negative. 

High,  prominent  cheek-bones  are  ugly,  in  the  first  place,  be- 
cause they  interfere  with  the  regularly  gradated  oval  of  the  face. 
Secondly,  because,  like  projecting  bones  and  angles  in  any  other 
part  of  the  body,  they  interrupt  the  regular  curve  of  Beauty. 
Thirdly,  because  they  are  coarse  and  inelegant,  offending  the  sense 
of  delicacy  and  grace,  like  big,  clumsy  ankles  and  wrists.  Fourthly, 
because  they  suggest  the  decrepitude  of  old  age  and  disease. 
In  the  healthy  cheek  of  youth  and  beauty  there  is  a  large 
amount  of  adipose  tissue,  both  under  the  skin  and  between  the 
subjacent  muscles.  When  age  or  disease  makes  fatal  inroads 
on  the  body,  this  fat  disappears  and  leaves  the  impression  of 
starvation.  "Famine  is  in  thy  cheeks,"  exclaims  Shakspere; 
and  again — 

"  Meagre  were  his  looks, 
Sharp  misery  had  worn  him  to  the  bones." 

When  the  malar  bones  are  too  high,  the  fleshy  cheeks,  instead  of 
including  them  in  a  plump  curve,  are  made  by  contrast  to  appear 
hollow,  thus  simulating  and  suggesting  the  appearance  of  disease 


424  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

to  those  whose  imagination  is  sufficiently  awake  to  notice  such 
suggestions.  And  besides  emaciation,  hollow  cheeks  suggest  an- 
other sign  of  age  and  decrepitude — the  loss  of  the  teeth,  which 
on  the  sides  of  the  jaws  help  to  give  youthful  cheeks  their  plump 
outlines. 

Finally,  prominent  cheek-bones  are  objectionable  because  they 
are  concomitants  of  the  large,  clumsy,  brutal  jaws  which 
characterise  savages  and  apes.  To  the  cheek  -  bones  the  upper 
jaw-bone  is  directly  attached  ;  hence  the  larger  the  teeth  are,  and 
the  more  vigorously  they  are  exercised  in  fighting  and  picking 
bones,  the  more  massive  must  be  the  cheek-bones,  to  prevent  the 
upper  jaw  from  being  pushed  out  of  position.  Moreover,  there  is 
attached  to  the  cheek-bones  a  powerful  muscle  which  connects  it 
with  the  lower  jaw,  and  by  its  contraction  brings  the  two  jaws 
together ;  and  this  is  a  second  way  in  which  violent  exercise  of 
the  jaws  tends  to  enlarge  the  cheek-bones,  for  all  bones  become 
enlarged  if  the  muscles  attached  to  them  are  much  exercised. 

At  a  recent  meeting  of  the  British  Association,  Sir  George 
Campbell  advanced  the  theory  that  the  Aryan  race,  to  which  we 
belong,  originally  had  prominent  cheek-bones,  like  those  of  lower 
races.  On  general  evolutionary  grounds  this  is  indeed  a  foregone 
conclusion ;  as  is  the  corollary  that  our  cheek-bones  have  become 
smaller,  for  the  same  reason  that  our  jaws  have  become  more 
delicate;  viz.  because  we  no  longer  use  them  to  fight  and  tear 
our  food  like  wild  beasts,  but  to  masticate  soft  cooked  food,  to 
talk,  etc.  Thus  does  the  progress  of  civilisation  enhance  our 
Personal  Beauty. 

An  excessive  diminution  in  the  size  of  the  cheek-bones,  as  of 
the  jaws,  will  be  prevented  by  Romantic  Love  (Sexual  Selection), 
which  ever  aims  at  establishing  and  preserving  those  proportions 
and  outlines  of  the  features  which  are  most  in  harmony  with  the 
general  laws  of  beauty. 

Among  the  lower  animals  cruel  Natural  Selection  eliminates 
those  individuals  who  are  ugly,  i.e.  unnatural,  unhealthy,  clumsy. 
With  mankind  charity  and  pity  have  checked  the  operation  of 
this  cruel  though  beneficial  law,  and  progress  in  the  direction  of 
refinement  and  Beauty  would  therefore  be  fatally  impeded  were  it 
not  that  Sexual  Selection,  or  Love  guided  by  the  sense  of  Beauty, 
steps  in  to  eliminate  the  ill-favoured,  who  bear  in  their  counten- 
ance too  conspicuously  the  marks  of  their  savage  and  animal 
ancestry.  Perhaps  Mr.  Wallace  had  some  such  thought  in  his 
mind  when  he  anticipated  the  time  when  man's  selection  shall 
have  supplanted  natural  selection 


THE  CHEEKS  425 

Yet  there  are  thousands  of  good  people  who  still  profess  to 
believe  that  "  beauty  is  only  skin  deep,"  and  that  Romantic  Love 
and  aesthetic  culture  are  of  no  practical  importance,  but  mere  gaudy 
soap-bubbles  to  delight  our  vision  for  a  transient  moment ! 

In  future  ages,  when  aesthetic  refinement  will  be  more  common, 
and  Romantic  Love,  its  offspring,  less  impeded  by  those  considera- 
tions of  rank  and  money  and  imaginary  "prudence  "  which  lead 
parents  to  sacrifice  the  physique  and  wellbeing  of  their  grand- 
children to  the  illusive  comfort  of  their  sons  and  daughters  (in 
"  marriages  of  reason  ") — what  an  impetus  will  then  be  given  to 
the  development  of  Personal  Beauty  !  Refined  mouths  and  noses, 
rosy  cheeks,  sparkling  eyes,  plump  and  graceful  healthy  figures, 
now  BO  lamentably  rare,  will  then  become  as  plentiful  as  black- 
berries in  the  autumn. 

COLOUR   AND   BLUSHES 

Although  the  heart's  warm  blood  is  not  carried  to  the  cheeks 
in  so  dense  a  network  of  arteries,  nor  so  near  the  surface  as  in  the 
lips,  yet  the  cheeks  come  next  to  the  lips  in  delicate  sensibility — a 
fact  which  Love  has  discovered  instinctively ;  for  a  kiss  on  the 
cheeks  is  still  a  kiss  of  love,  whereas  a  kiss  on  the  forehead  or  eye- 
lids indicates  less  ecstatic  forms  of  affection  or  esteem. 

What  makes  the  cheeks  so  sensitive  is  the  great  delicacy  of  their 
transparent  skin,  which  readily  allows  the  colour  of  the  blood  to 
be  seen  as  through  a  veil,  not  only  in  blushing,  but  in  the  natural 
rosy  aspect  of  youth  and  health. 

Though  the  cheeks  may  not  vie  with  the  lips  and  teeth,  the 
hair  and  the  eyes,  in  lustrous  depth  of  colour,  they  have  an  ad- 
vantage in  their  chamseleonic  variety  and  changes  of  tint,  and  their 
delicious  gradations.  Even  the  delicate  blushes  on  an  apple  or  a 
peach,  caused  by  the  warm  and  loving  glances  of  the  sun, — what 
are  they  compared  to  the  luscious,  mellow  tints  on  a  maiden's  ripe 
cheeks  ?  Nor  is  it  possible  to  find  in  the  leaves  of  an  autumnal 
American  forest  more  endless  individual  nuances  and  shades  of  red 
and  rose  and  pink  than  in  the  cheeks  of  lovely  girls — unless  in- 
dolence or  other  sins  against  health  have  painted  them  with 
ghastly  repulsive  pallor,  or  the  hideous  Hottentot  habit  of  bedaubing 
them  with  brutal  paint  has  ruined  their  translucent  delicacy. 

Says  the  author  of  the  Ugly  Girl  Papers  :  "  Some  cheeks  have 
a  wiuelike,  purplish  glow,  others  a  transparent  saffron  tinge,  like 
yellowish-pink  porcelain;  others  still  have  clear,  pale  carmine; 
and  the  rarest  of  all,  that  suffused  tint  like  apple-blossoms." 


426  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

At  summer  resorts  where  girls  drink  in  daily  draughts  of  the 
elixir  of  youth  and  beauty,  commonly  known  as  fresh  air,  one  of 
their  greatest  love-charms  is  these  colour-symphonies  on  their 
cheeks,  changing  their  melody  with  every  pulse-beat.  These 
charms  they  might  possess  all  the  year  round  did  not  their  parents 
commonly  convert  their  dwelling-houses  into  hothouses,  reeking 
with  stagnant,  enervating  air. 

If,  therefore,  we  read  that  Africans  prefer  the  opaque,  inky, 
immutable  ebony  of  their  complexion  to  the  translucent,  ever- 
changing  tints,  eloquent  of  health  and  varied  emotions,  in  a  white 
maiden's  face,  we — well,  we  simply  smile,  on  recalling  the  fact 
that  even  among  ourselves  a  cheap,  gaudy  chromo  is  preferred  by 
the  great  multitude  to  the  work  of  a  great  master  which  they  do 
not  understand.  The  slow  growth  of  aesthetic  refinement  is 
illustrated  by  the  fact  that  it  is  only  a  few  years  since  Fashion 
has  set  its  face  against  the  use  of  vulgar  paints  and  powders, 
which  ensure  a  most  questionable  temporary  advantage  at  the  ex- 
pense of  future  permanent  defacement. 

The  colours  of  the  cheeks,  so  far  under  consideration,  are  to  a 
certain  extent  subject  to  our  will  and  skill ;  for  no  one  who  culti- 
vates the  complexion  and  has  plenty  of  pure  air  need  be  without 
these  blooming  buccal  roses.  But  the  "  thousand  blushing  appa- 
ritions "  that  start  into  our  faces  are,  as  Shakspere's  well-chosen 
words  imply,  as  independent  of  our  will  and  control  as  any  other 
apparitions. 

Are  blushes  ornamental  or  useful  ?  That  is,  were  they  devel- 
oped through  Sexual  or  through  Natural  Selection  ?  Such  Shaks- 
perian  expressions  as  "  Bid  the  cheek  be  ready  with  a  blush,  modest 
as  morning ; "  "  Thy  cheeks  blush  for  pure  shame  to  counterfeit 
our  roses ; "  and  "  To  blush  and  beautify  the  cheek  again,"  suggest 
the  notion  that  the  great  poet  regarded  blushes  as  beautiful ;  while 
the  following  permit  a  different  interpretation :  "Her  blush  is  guilti- 
ness, not  modesty ; "  "  Blushing  cheeks  by  faults  are  bred,  and  fears 
by  pale  white  shown;"  "You  virtuous  ass,  you  bashful  fool,  must 
you  be  blushing?"  " His  treasons  will  sit  blushing  in  his  face." 

Let  us  see  if  any  light  is  thrown  on  the  problem  by  going  back 
to  the  beginning,  and  tracing  the  development  of  the  habit  of 
blushing.  That  blushing  is  a  comparatively  recent  human  acquisi- 
tion is  made  apparent  from  the  facts  that  it  is  not  seen  in  animals, 
nor  in  very  young  children,  nor  in  idiots,  as  a  rule ;  while  among 
savages  the  faculty  of  blushing  seems  to  be  dependent  on  the  pre- 
sence of  a  sense  of  shame,  which  is  almost,  if  not  entirely,  unknown 
to  the  lowest  tribea. 


THE  CHEEKS  427 

That  animals  never  blush,  Darwin  thinks,  is  almost  certain. 
"  Blushing,"  he  says,  "  is  the  most  peculiar  and  the  most  human  of 
all  expressions.  Monkeys  redden  from  passion,  but  it  would  require 
an  overwhelming  amount  of  evidence  to  make  us  believe  that  any 
animal  could  blush."  Concerning  children  he  says  :  "  The  young 
blush  much  more  freely  than  the  old,  but  not  during  infancy,  which 
is  remarkable,  as  we  know  that  infants  at  a  very  early  age  redden 
from  passion.  I  have  received  authentic  accounts  of  two  little 
girls  blushing  at  the  ages  of  between  two  and  three  years  ;  and  of 
another  sensitive  child,  a  year  older,  blushing  when  reproved  for  a 
fault." 

"  In  the  dark-brown  Peruvian,"  says  Mr.  Tylor,  "  or  the  yet 
blacker  African,  though  a  hand  or  a  thermometer  put  to  the  cheek 
will  detect  the  blush  by  its  heat,  the  somewhat  increased  depth  of 
colour  is  hardly  perceptible  to  the  eye."  Dr.  Burgess  repeatedly 
had  occasion  to  observe  that  a  scar  in  the  face  of  a  negress  "  in- 
variably became  red  whenever  she  was  abruptly  spoken  to,  or 
charged  with  any  trivial  offence."  And  Darwin  was  assured  by 
several  trustworthy  observers  "  that  they  have  seen  on  the  faces  of 
negroes  an  appearance  resembling  a  blush,  under  circumstances 
which  woidd  have  excited  one  in  us,  though  their  skins  were  of  an 
ebony-black  tint.  Some  describe  it  as  a  blushing  brown,  but  most 
say  that  the  blackness  becomes  more  intense." 

Now  evidence  has  already  been  quoted  in  a  previous  chapter 
showing  that  negroes  admire  a  black  skin  more  than  a  white  one 
(vide  Descent  of  Man,  1885,  p.  579).  Is  it  likely,  therefore,  that 
the  blush  was  admired  by  negroes,  and  became  a  ground  of  selection, 
because  it  intensified  the  blackness  of  the  skin ']  It  hardly  seems 
probable  that  the  coarse  negro  can  be  influenced  in  his  amorous 
choice  by  any  such  subtle,  almost  imperceptible  difference;  and 
even  the  great  originator  of  the  theory  of  Sexual  Selection  does  not 
believe  that  it  accounts  for  the  origin  of  blushes :  "  No  doubt  a 
slight  blush  adds  to  the  beauty  of  a  maiden's  face ;  and  the  Cir- 
cassian women  who  are  capable  of  blushing  invariably  fetch  a 
higher  price  in  the  seraglio  of  the  Sultan  than  less  susceptible 
women.  But  the  firmest  believer  in  the  efficacy  of  sexual  selection 
will  hardly  suppose  that  blushing  was  acquired  as  a  sexual  orna- 
ment. This  view  would  also  be  opposed  to  what  has  just  been 
said  about  the  dark-coloured  races  blushing  in  an  invisible  manner." 

On  the  other  hand,  it  seems  equally  difficult  to  account  for  the 
origin  of  blushing  on  utilitarian  grounds.  No  one  likes  to  be 
caught  blushing ;  on  the  contrary,  every  one  tries  to  conceal  such 
a  state  by  lowering  or  averting  the  face.  How  could  such  an  un- 


428  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

welcome,  embarrassing  habit  prove  of  advantage  to  us?  Sir  Charles 
Bell's  remarks  on  the  subject  may  serve  as  a  clue  to  the  answer. 
That  blushing  "  is  a  provision  for  expression  may  be  inferred,"  he 
says,  "  from  the  colour  extending  only  to  the  surface  of  the  face, 
neck,  and  breast — the  parts  most  exposed.  .  .  .  The  colour  caused 
by  blushing  gives  brilliancy  and  interest  to  the  expression  of  the 
face.  In  this  we  perceive  an  advantage  possessed  by  the  fair 
family  of  mankind,  and  which  must  be  lost  to  the  dark ;  for  I  can 
hardly  believe  that  a  blush  may  be  seen  in  the  negro.  .  .  .  Blush- 
ing assorts  well  with  youthful  and  with  effeminate  features,  while 
nothing  is  more  hateful  than  a  dog- face  that  exhibits  no  token  of 
sensibility  in  the  variations  of  colour." 

The  poet  Young  tells  us  that  "  the  man  that  blushes  is  not 
quite  a  brute ; "  and  Darwin  quotes  from  Humboldt  a  sneer  of  the 
Spaniard,  "How  can  those  be  trusted  who  know  not  how  to 
blush  1 "  Darwin's  remark  that  some  idiots,  "  if  not  utterly 
degraded,  are  capable  of  blushing,"  also  accords  with  Bell's  notion 
that  blushing  is  a  provision  for  expression.  Bell's  assertion  that  it 
is  "  indicative  of  excitement "  is,  however,  not  sufficiently  definite. 
What  is  it  that  a  blush  expresses  ?  Evidently  nervous  sensibility, 
a  moral  sense,  modesty,  innocence.  The  Circassian  who  can  blush 
is  more  highly  valued  than  another,  because  the  blush  is  eloquent 
of  maiden  modesty  and  heart  untainted.  The  fact  that  there  is 
also  a  blush  of  violated  modesty,  a  blush  of  shame,  and  of  guilt, 
does  not  argue  against  this  view,  any  more  than  the  fact  that  we 
blush  if,  though  innocent,  we  are  accused  of  guilt.  It  is  the 
association  of  ideas  and  of  emotions  that  evokes  the  blush  in  such 
cases. 

We  may  therefore  conclude  that  a  blush  is  useful  on  account  of 
its  moral  beauty,  i.e.  its  expressiveness  of  presumptive  innocence, 
or  at  least  of  a  desire  to  be  considered  innocent ;  whereas  the  un- 
blushing front  and  cheek  indicate  a  brutal,  callous  indifference  to 
virtue.  We  admire  a  blush  as  "the  most  peculiar  and  the  most 
human  of  all  expressions."  And  we  admire  it  also,  to  some  extent, 
on  purely  aesthetic  grounds,  if  not  exaggerated.  A  slight  blush 
lias  a  rosy  charm  of  its  own,  and  it  is  only  when  it  becomes  a  too 
diffused  and  deep  facial  Aurora  borealis  that  it  loses  its  charm, 
because  suggestive  of  the  hectic  or  fever  flush,  or  the  redness 
caused  by  anger,  heat,  violent  exertion,  etc.,  which  has  a  physio- 
logical origin  distinct  from  that  of  blushing. 

According  to  Bell,  "  the  colour  which  attends  exertion  or  the 
violent  passions,  as  of  rage,  arises  from  general  vascular  excitement, 
and  differs  from  blushing.  Blushing  is  too  sudden  and  too  partia! 


THE  EARS  429 

to  be  traced  to  the  heart's  action."  Darwin  endeavours  to  find  the 
explanation  of  blushing  in  the  intimate  sympathy  which  exista 
between  the  capillary  circulation  of  the  surface  of  the  head  and 
face,  and  that  of  the  brain,  which  would  account  for  the  mental 
confusion  of  shyness,  modesty,  etc.,  being  so  immediately  photo- 
graphed on  the  face.  He  sums  up  his  theory  in  these  words  : — 

"  I  conclude  that  blushing — whether  due  to  shyness — to  shame 
for  a  real  crime — to  shame  from  a  breach  of  the  laws  of  etiquette 
— 1o  modesty  from  humility — to  modesty  from  an  indelicacy — 
depends  in  all  cases  on  the  same  principle  ;  this  principle  being  a 
sensitive  regard  for  the  opinion,  more  particularly  for  the  deprecia- 
tion of  others,  primarily  in  relation  to  our  personal  appearance, 
especially  of  our  faces;  and  secondarily,  through  the  force  of 
association  and  habit,  in  relation  to  the  opinion  of  others  on  our 
conduct." 

He  gives  various  illustrations  showing  how  by  directing  our 
attention  to  certain  parts  of  the  body  we  can  increase  their  sensi- 
tivity and  activity  in  a  manner  analogous  to  that  postulated  by 
the  theory  of  blushing.  But  for  these  the  reader  must  be  referred 
to  his  essay  on  this  subject  in  the  Expression  of  Emotions — a 
masterpiece  of  physiological  and  psychological  analysis.  One  more 
passage,  however,  may  be  cited,  as  it  helps  to  justify  this  long  dis- 
cussion of  blushing  by  showing  its  special  relations  to  Romantic 
Love  and  Personal  Beauty : — 

"  It  is  plain  to  every  one  that  young  men  and  women  are  highly 
sensitive  to  the  opinion  of  each  other  with  reference  to  their  per- 
sonal appearance ;  and  they  blush  incomparably  more  in  presence  of 
the  opposite  sex  than  in  that  of  their  own.  A  young  man,  not 
very  liable  to  blush,  will  blush  intensely  at  any  slight  ridicule  of 
his  appearance  from  a  girl  whose  judgment  on  any  important 
subject  he  would  disregard.  No  happy  pair  of  young  lovers, 
valuing  each  other's  admiration  and  love  more  than  anything  else 
in  the  world,  probably  ever  courted  each  other  without  many  a 
blush.  Even  the  barbarians  of  Tierra  del  Fuego,  according  to  Mr. 
Bridges,  blush  '  chiefly  in  regard  to  women,  but  certainly  also  at 
their  own  personal  appearance.'" 


THE  EARS 

A  USELESS  ORNAMENT 

The  shell  of  the  ear  appears  to  be  the  only  part  of  man's  visible 
body  which  has  ceased  to  be  useful  and  become  purely  ornamental 


430  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

"  Persons  whose  ears  have  been  cut  off  hear  just  as  well  as  before/ 
says  Professor  Haeckel.  Dr.  J.  Toynbee,  F.R.S.,  "  after  collecting 
all  the  evidence  on  this  head,  concludes  that  the  external  shell  is 
of  no  distinct  use ; "  and  Darwin  was  informed  by  Professor 
Preyer  that  after  experimenting  on  the  functions  of  the  shell  of 
the  ear  he  had  come  to  nearly  the  same  conclusion. 

To  infer  from  this  that  our  external  ears  have  been  developed, 
through  Sexual  Selection,  for  purely  ornamental  purposes,  would 
not  be  in  accord  with  scientific  analogies.  For,  often  as  existing 
organs  (horns,  feathers,  etc.)  are  modified  for  ornamental  purposes, 
there  are  no  known  instances  of  any  that  have  oeeu  specially 
developed  for  that  purpose ;  even  the  facial  muscles  of  expression 
being,  as  we  have  seen,  in  this  predicament.  Hence  we  are  led 
to  conclude  that  man  has  inherited  the  shell  of  his  ear  from  a 
remote  apelike  ancestor,  to  whom  it  was  of  use  in  catching  faint 
sounds,  and  who  consequently  had  the  power,  common  to  other 
animals,  not  only  of  directing  the  ears  as  a  whole  to  different  points 
of  the  compass,  but  of  temporarily  altering  its  shape.  Indeed,  one 
of  the  strongest  proofs  of  our  descent  from  lower  animals  lies  in 
the  fact  that  man  still  possesses,  in  a  rudimentary  form,  the 
muscles  needed  to  move  the  ears.  Some  savage  tribes  have  con- 
siderable control  over  these  muscles.  The  famous  physiologist, 
Johannes  Muller,  after  long  and  patient  efforts,  succeeded  in 
recovering  the  power  of  moving  his  ears ;  and  Darwin  writes  :  "I 
have  seen  one  man  who  could  draw  the  whole  ear  forwards ;  other 
men  can  draw  it  upwards ;  another  who  could  draw  it  backwards ; 
and  from  what  one  of  these  persons  told  me,  it  is  probable  that 
most  of  us,  by  often  touching  our  ears,  and  thus  directing  our 
attention  towards  them,  could  recover  some  power  of  movement  by 
repeated  trials." 

Ordinary  monkeys  still  possess  the  power  to  move  their  ears ; 
but  the  manlike  or  anthropoid  apes  resemble  us  in  the  rudimentary 
condition  of  their  ear-muscles ;  and  Darwin  was  assured  by  the 
keepers  in  the  London  Zoological  Gardens  that  these  animals  never 
move  or  erect  their  ears.  He  suggests  two  theories  to  account  for 
the  loss  of  this  power :  first,  that,  owing  to  their  arboreal  habits 
and  great  strength,  these  apes  were  not  exposed  to  much  danger, 
and  thus  gradually,  through  disuse,  lost  control  over  these  organs, 
just  as  birds  on  oceanic  islands  where  they  are  not  subject  to 
attacks  have  lost  the  use  of  their  wings ;  secondly,  that  the  freedom 
with  which  they  can  move  the  head  in  a  horizontal  plane  enabled 
them  to  dispense  with  mobile  ears. 

The  remarkable  variability  of  the  ears — greater,  by  the  way,  hi 


THE  EARS  431 

men  tkaii  in  women — is  another  reason  for  regarding  them  as 
rudimentary  organs,  inherited  from  remote  semi-human  ancestors, 
to  whom  they  were  useful ;  for  great  variability  is  a  characteristic 
of  all  rudimentary  organs.  Haeckel  facetiously  suggests  that  "  at 
large  assemblies,  where  our  interest  is  not  sufficiently  enchained, 
nothing  is  more  instructive  and  entertaining  than  a  comparative 
study  of  the  countless  variations  in  the  form  of  the  ears."  The 
ancient  Greek  artists  were  aware  of  this  variability,  for  Winckle- 
mann  speaks  of  "  the  infinite  variety  of  forms  of  the  ear  on  heads 
modelled  from  life. "  "  It  was  customary  with  the  ancient  artists 
to  elaborate  no  portion  of  the  head  more  diligently  than  the  ears." 
"  In  portrait  figures,  when  the  countenance  is  so  much  injured  as 
not  to  be  recognised,  we  can  occasionally  make  a  correct  conjecture 
as  to  the  person  intended,  if  it  is  one  of  whom  we  have  any 
knowledge,  merely  by  the  form  of  the  ear ;  thus  we  infer  a  head 
of  Marcus  Aurelius  from  an  ear  with  an  unusually  large  inner 
opening." 

If  we  compare  a  man's  ears  with  those  of  a  dog  or  horse, 
differences  of  shape  appear  no  less  conspicuous  than  differences  in 
mobility.  Two  points  are  especially  characteristic  of  man — the 
folded  upper  margin  and  the  lobule.  Our  cousins,  the  anthropoid 
apes,  are  the  only  other  animals  which  have  the  margin  of  the  ear  thus 
folded  inwards,  the  lower  monkeys  having  them  simple  and  pointed, 
like  other  animals.  The  sculptor,  Mr.  Woolner,  called  Darwin's 
attention  to  "  a  little  blunt  point,  projecting  from  the  inwardly- 
folded  margin  or  helix."  Darwin,  on  investigating  the  matter, 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  these  points  "  are  vestiges  of  the  tips 
of  former  erect  and  pointed  ears  ";  being  led  to  think  so  "from  the 
frequency  of  their  occurrence,  and  from  the  general  correspondence 
in  position  with  that  of  the  tip  of  a  pointed  ear." 

The  lobule  is  still  more  peculiar  to  man  than  the  folded  margin, 
since  he  does  not  even  share  it  with  the  anthropoid  apes,  although, 
according  to  Professor  Mivart,  "  a  rudiment  of  it  is  found  in  the 
gorilla."  An  intermediate  stage  between  man  and  ape  is  occupied 
by  some  savage  tribes  in  whom  the  lobule  is  scantily  developed  or 
even  absent. 

COSMETICS   AND   FASHION 

The  lobule  of  the  human  ear  has  been  presumably  developed 
through  the  agency  of  Sexual  Selection,  as  it  is  an  ornament  the 
absence  of  which  is  at  once  felt.  And  there  are  other  ways  in 
which  this  organ  has  been  gradually  brought  into  harmony  with 
the  laws  of  beauty.  Thus  the  loss  of  the  hair  (of  which  rudiments 


432  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

are  still  occasionally  present)  made  visible  the  soft  skin  and  the 
delicate  tint  of  the  ear,  which,  like  that  of  the  cheeks,  may  be 
momentarily  heightened  by  a  blush,  and  thus  become  an  index  of 
emotional  expression.  A  permanently  heightened  colour  of  the  ear, 
however,  caused  by  exposure  to  extreme  cold  or  by  rough  treatment, 
is  almost  as  great  a  blemish  as  a  red  nose  or  pallid  lips.  If  boxers 
are  anxious  to  deform  their  ears,  no  one  has  a  right  to  object ;  but 
children  have  a  right  to  ask  of  their  parents  and  teachers  not  to 
redden  their  ears  permanently  by  pulling  or  boxing  them.  That  a 
delicate  and  important  sense-organ  like  the  ear  should  be  so 
frequently  chosen  as  a  place  to  inflict  punishment,  shows  the 
necessity  of  a  general  diffusion  of  hygienic  knowledge.  It  may  not 
be  superfluous  to  add  a  caution  to  lovers,  that  the  ears  should 
never  be  taken  as  an  osculatory  substitute  for  the  lips  or  cheeks, 
as  cases  are  known  in  medical  practice  where  the  tympanum,  and 
consequently  the  hearing,  has  been  destroyed  by  a  vigorous  kiss 
implanted  by  a  foolish  lover  on  his  sweetheart's  ears. 

An  ear  to  be  beautiful  should  be  about  twice  as  long  as  broad. 
It  should  be  attached  to  the  head  almost  straight,  or  slightly 
inclined  backwards,  and  should  almost  touch  the  head  with  the 
back  of  its  upper  point.  Many  poor  girls  are  deformed  for  life 
through  the  ignorance  of  their  mothers,  who  allow  them  to  wear 
their  hair  or  bonnets  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  the  ears  stand  out 
obliquely.  As  the  ears  contain  no  bones,  but  consist  entirely  of 
cartilages  and  skin,  they  can  be,  more  readily  even  than  the  nose, 
moulded  into  a  fine  shape  at  an  early  age.  As  Drs.  Brinton  and 
Napheys  remark,  "Even  when  the  ear  is  in  part  or  altogether  absent, 
the  case  is  not  desperate.  An  *  artificial  ear'  can  be  made  of 
vulcanised  rubber,  or  other  material,  tinted  the  colour  of  the  flesh, 
and  attached  to  the  side  of  the  head  with  such  deftness  that  its 
character  will  escape  every  ordinary  eye."  There  is  therefore  no 
excuse  for  having  badly-shaped  or  wrongly-inclined  ears  in  these 
days  of  cosmetic  surgery. 

In  the  most  beautiful  ears  the  lobe  is  free,  and  not  attached  to 
the  head  in  its  lower  part.  Heavy  earrings,  which  have  a  tendency 
to  unduly  enlarge  the  lobules,  are  now  tabooed  by  Fashion ;  but 
very  small  jewels  in  the  ear  may  be  looked  on,  like  small  finger- 
rings,  necklaces,  and  bracelets,  as  unobjectionable  from  an  aesthetic 
point  of  view,  though  real  beauty  unadorned  is  adorned  the  most. 

Formerly  Fashion  maltreated  the  poor  ears  quite  as  badly  as 
it  still  does  the  waist  and  the  feet.  Lubbock  remarks  that  the 
East  Islanders  enlarge  their  ears  till  they  come  down  to  the 
shoulders;  and  Darwin,  after  referring  to  liberties  taken  with 


THE  EARS  483 

the  nose,  says  that  "  the  ears  are  everywhere  pierced  and  similarly 
ornamented,  and  with  the  Botocudos  and  Lenguas  of  South  America 
the  hole  is  gradually  so  much  enlarged  that  the  lower  edge  touches 
the  shoulder." 

Among  the  Greeks,  as  Becker  remarks,  "  it  was  considered  a 
dishonour,  or  a  token  of  foreign  manners,  for  men  to  have  their  ears 
bored.  .  .  .  Women  and  girls,  however,  not  only  used  earrings, 
evcima,  cAAo/ifia,  eAiKT^/ocs,  which  are  seen  perpetually  in  vases, 
but  also  wore  numerous  articles  of  jewellery  about  the  neck,  the 
arms,  and  on  the  leg  above  the  ankle." 

The  ancients,  too,  had  heard  of  the  malformed  ears  of  primitive 
peoples.  "  It  is  possible,"  says  Tylor,  "  that  there  may  be  some 
truth  in  the  favourite  wonder-tale  of  the  old  geographers,  about  the 
tribes  whose  great  ears  reached  down  to  their  shoulders,  though 
the  story  had  to  be  stretched  a  good  deal  when  it  was  declared 
they  lay  down  on  one  ear  and  covered  themselves  with  the  other 
for  a  blanket." 

Such  blanket-ears  would  be  the  aesthetic  equivalent  of  modern 
bustles,  crinolettes,  and  wasp-waists. 

PHYSIOGNOMIC   VAGARIES 

Ever  since  the  days  of  ancient  Greek  philosophy  ingenious 
attempts  have  been  made  to  find  a  special  meaning  for  this  or  that 
particular  form  of  the  ear.  According  to  Aristotle,  a  long  eai 
indicates  a  good  memory,  whereas  modern  physiognomists  incline 
to  the  opinion  that  a  long  ear  shows  a  man's  mental  relationship 
to  a  certain  unjustly-maligned  animal.  Small  ears,  Lavater  thinks, 
are  a  sign  of  an  active  mind,  while  a  deep  shell  indicates  a  thirst 
for  knowledge. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  ears  have  no  connection  whatever  with 
intellectual  or  emotional  expression,  except  that  a  well-shaped  ear 
indicates  in  a  general  way  that  its  possessor  comes  off  a  stock  in 
which  the  laws  of  cosmetic  hygiene  have  been  observed  during 
many  generations.  To  many  of  the  lower  animals  the  ears  are  a 
means  of  emotional  expression.  What,  for  instance,  could  be  more 
expressive  and  droll  than  the  way  a  dog  expresses  mild  surprise  or 
expectation  by  pricking  up  his  ears?  Or  what  a  more  certain 
sign  of  viciousness  in  a  horse  than  the  drawing  back  of  the  ears  ? 
— a  movement  of  which  Darwin  has  found  the  reason  in  the  fact 
that  all  animals  that  fight  with  their  teeth  retract  their  ears  to 
protect  them ;  whence,  through  habit  and  association,  it  comes 
that  they  draw  them  back  whenever  a  fighting  mood  comes  over 


434  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

them.  Man,  on  the  other  hand,  never  uses  his  ears  for  emotional 
expression,  because  they  are  the  least  mobile  part  of  the  body. 
Now  form  is  merely  crystallised  expression :  and  the  absence  of 
special  movements  for  emotional  expression  necessarily  prevents 
individual  alterations  indicative  of  character.  Hence  the  absurdity 
of  trying  to  use  the  ears  as  a  basis  for  physiognomic  distinctions. 

NOISE   AND   CIVILISATION 

What  is  the  cause  of  the  folding  of  the  margin  of  the  human 
ear,  which  distinguishes  it  from  that  of  all  other  animals  ?  Darwin 
remarks  that  it  "  appears  to  be  in  some  manner  connected  with  the 
whole  external  ear  being  permanently  pressed  backwards ; "  but 
this  does  not  explain  the  mysterious  phenomenon.  After  many 
hours  of  profound  meditation  on  this  subject  I  have  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  this  slight  folding  of  the  ear's  margin  is  the  begin- 
ning of  a  new  phase  of  human  evolution.  In  course  of  time — this 
cannot  be  disproved — the  fold  of  the  margin  will  become  larger 
and  larger,  until  finally  the  shells  of  the  ear  will  have  been  trans- 
formed into  mobile  lids  for  shutting  out  at  will  disagreeable  noises, 
even  as  the  eyelids  have  been  developed  to  shut  out  glaring  light. 
This  would  account  for  the  providential  preservation  of  the  rudi- 
mentary ear- muscles  referred  to  above.  When  this  process  of 
evolution  is  completed  men  coming  home  late  will  no  longer  have 
to  listen  to  curtain-lectures.  The  innovation  will  tend  to  make 
them  polite,  for  instead  of  telling  the  lecturer  to  "  shut  up,"  they 
will  shut  up  themselves. 

Seriously  speaking,  such  movable  ear-lids  are  very  much  needed 
in  this  transition  stage  of  civilisation.  The  present  age  of  steam 
will  by  future  historians  be  classified  as  the  age  of  noise.  It  is 
almost  impossible  to  find  a  place  within  ten  miles  of  a  city  where 
one  can  rest  without  having  one's  sleep  constantly  disturbed,  or  at 
least  deprived  of  its  refreshing  depth,  by  the  blowing  of  railway 
and  factory  whistles.  Both  are  unnecessary,  inasmuch  as  railway 
signals  would  be  quite  as  effective  if  not  so  murderously  loud  and 
prolonged,  while  factory  whistles  are  either  blown  at  the  moment 
when  the  operatives  go  to  work,  when  a  simple  bell  would  do  as 
well,  or  they  are  blown  an  hour  earlier  to  wake  up  the  workmen, 
— a  most  outrageous  proceeding,  as  everybody  else  sleeping  within 
a  radius  of  a  mile  or  more  is  thus  waked  up  at  six  o'clock. 

The  fact  that  these  nuisances  have  so  long  been  tolerated  shows 
how  primitive  is  as  yet  the  aesthetic  development  of  the  average 
human  ear.  Some  people  even  smile  at  you  for  being  so  "  nervous," 


THE  EARS  485 

and  boast  of  their  indifference  to  such  hideous,  brain-racking  noises. 
The  Esquimaux  and  Chinese  would  doubtless  assume  a  similar 
attitude  regarding  their  indifference  to  noisome  stenches.  In 
mediaeval  times,  Europeans  in  general  were  quite  as  indifferent  to 
the  emanations  from  their  gutters  as  they  still  are  to  the  hideous 
noises  in  the  streets.  It  has  often  been  noted  with  sin-prise  that 
the  death-rate  in  London  and  the  general  aspect  of  health  should 
be  so  much  more  favourable  than  that  of  continental  cities,  which 
are  free  from  the  depressing  London  fogs.  The  reason,  doubtless, 
lies  chiefly  in  the  facts  that  there  are  no  vile  sewer  odours  in 
London  to  poison  the  atmosphere,  and  that  the  pavement  of  the 
streets  is  of  such  a  nature  that  one  can  sleep  soundly  at  night, 
provided  there  are  no  steam  whistles  near.  London,  too,  does  not 
tolerate  the  brutal  whip-cracking  which  transforms  French,  German, 
and  Swiss  towns  and  cities  into  Bedlams  of  noise.  In  this  respect 
New  York  resembles  London ;  but  here  the  comparison  ends.  New 
York  pavements  are  the  noisiest,  roughest,  and  dirtiest  in  the 
world.  I  have  known  of  invalids  who  were  advised  to  drive  in 
the  Central  Park,  but  could  not  do  so  because  they  could  not  bear 
on  their  way  to  drive  even  up  Fifth  Avenue, — a  street  lined  with 
the  houses  of  millionaires.  And  to  walk  on  Broadway  for  twenty 
minutes,  talking  to  a  friend,  makes  one  as  hoarse  as  delivering  a 
two-hour  lecture. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  a  horror  of  useless  noise  grows  with 
the  general  refinement  of  the  senses  and  the  mind.  Goethe's 
aversion  to  noise,  especially  at  night,  is  well  known.  It  led  him 
to  poison  dogs  that  disturbed  him.  The  delicate  hearing  of  Franz, 
the  great  song  composer,  was  ruined  by  the  whistle  of  a  locomotive. 
And  Schopenhauer  has  put  the  whole  matter  into  a  nutshell  in 
these  admirable  words :  "  Intellectual  persons,  and  all  in  general 
who  have  much  esprit,  cannot  endure  noise.  Astounding,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  the  insensibility  of  ordinary  people  to  noise.  The 
quantity  of  noise  which  any  one  can  endure  without  annoyance  is 
really  related  inversely  to  his  mental  endowments,  and  may  be 
regarded  as  a  pretty  accurate  measure  of  them," 


A   MUSICAL   VOICE 

It  is  self-evident  that  indifference  to  ear-splitting  noises  implies 
a  lack  of  appreciation  for  the  exquisite  clang-tints  of  music ;  for 
whenever  the  acoustic  nerve  is  sufficiently  refined  to  appreciate 
such  subtle  tints,  it  is  affected  as  painfully  by  harsh  sounds  as  the 
artistic  eye  is  by  glaring  colours  and  flickering  light.  And  an  ear 


436  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

which  is  indifferent  to  the  sweetness  of  musical  sounds  is  of  COUIKS 
indifferent  also  to  the  musical  charm  of  the  speaking  voice.  But 
a  sweetly  modulated  voice  is  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  attributes 
of  Personal  Beauty — for  Beauty  refers  to  sounds  as  well  as  to 
sights — 

"  Her  voice  was  ever  soft, 
Gentle  and  low,  an  excellent  thing  in  woman."— SHAKSPEBK. 

There  is  as  much  variety  in  voices  as  in  faces ;  and  in  estimat- 
ing a  person's  general  refinement,  the  voice  is  perhaps  a  safer  guide 
than  the  face ;  because  the  quality  of  the  voice  is  largely  a  matter 
of  individual  training,  whereas  in  reading  faces  the  judgment  is 
warped  by  the  presence  of  inherited  features  speaking  of  traits 
which  have  not  been  modified  by  individual  effort  and  culture. 

Many  young  men  and  women  live  in  absolute  indifference  to  the 
quality  of  their  speaking  voice,  till  one  day  Cupid  arouses  them 
from  their  unsesthetic  slumber  with  his  golden  arrows,  and  makes 
them  eager  not  only  to  brush  up  their  hats  and  improve  their 
personal  appearance,  but  also  to  modulate  their  voices  into  sweet, 
expressive  accents.  But  the  vocal  cords,  like  a  violin,  can  only  be 
made  to  yield  mellow  sounds  after  long  practice  j  hence  the  usual 
result  of  a  sudden  effort  to  speak  in  love's  sweet  accents  is  a 
ridiculous  lover's  falsetto. 


THE  NOSE 

SHAPE  AND   SIZE 

"  The  fate  of  innumerable  girls  has  been  decided  by  a  slight 
upward  or  downward  curvature  of  the  nose,"  says  Schopenhauer ; 
and  Pascal  points  out  that  if  Cleopatra's  nose  had  been  but  a  trifle 
larger,  the  whole  political  geography  of  this  planet  might  have 
been  different.  Owing  to  the  fact  that  the  nose  occupies  the  most 
prominent  part  of  the  face,  Professor  Kollmann  remarks  that  "  the 
partial  or  complete  loss  of  the  nose  causes  a  greater  disfigurement 
than  a  much  greater  fault  of  conformation  in  any  other  part  of  the 
face."  And  Winckelmann  thus  bears  witness  to  the  inrportance 
of  the  nose  as  an  element  of  Personal  Beauty:  "The  pi:iof,  easy 
to  be  understood,  of  the  superiority  of  shape  of  the  Groek*  and  the 
present  inhabitants  of  the  Levant  lies  in  the  fact  that  we  find 
among  them  no  flattened  noses,  which  are  the  greatest  disfigure- 
ment of  the  face." 

Yet  here  again  we  find  that  "  tastes  differ."  Thus  we  read  in 
Darwin  "that  the  ancient  Huns  during  the  age  of  Attila  were 


THE  NOSE  487 

accustomed  to  flatten  the  noses  of  their  infants  with  bandages,  '  for 
the  sake  of  exaggerating  a  natural  conformation ' "  [note  the  stamp 
of  Fashion] ;  that,  "  with  the  Tahitians,  to  be  called  long-nose  is 
considered  as  an  insult,  and  they  compress  the  noses  and  fore- 
heads of  their  children  for  the  sake  of  beauty ; "  and  that  "  the 
same  holds  true  with  the  Malays  of  Sumatra,  the  Hottentots, 
certain  Negroes,  and  the  natives  of  Brazil."  But  the  ne-plus-ultra 
of  nasal  ugliness  is  found  among  the  Tartars  and  Esquimaux. 
"  European  travellers  in  Tartary  in  the  Middle  Ages,"  says  Tylor, 
"  described  its  flat-nosed  inhabitants  as  having  no  noses  at  all,  but 
breathing  through  holes  in  the  face."  And  among  the  Esquimaux, 
as  Mantegazza  remarks,  a  rule  can  be  placed  on  both  the  cheeks 
at  once  without  touching  the  nose.  Flat  noses,  says  Topinard, 
"  are  either  depressed  as  a  whole,  as  among  Chinese,  or  only  in 
the  lower  half,  as  among  Malays.  Negroes  have  both  forms." 

The  yellow  and  black  races,  who  naturally  have  flat  noses, 
consider  it  fashionable  to  have  them  very  flat.  The  same  is  true 
with  our  modem  Fashion  regarding  wasp-waists  and  feet.  But  in 
regard  to  the  face  the  white  races — including  even  the  women — 
have  emancipated  themselves  from  the  tyranny  of  fashionable 
exaggeration.  Hence,  though  we  admire  prominent  noses,  we  do 
not  admire  them  more  and  more  in  proportion  to  their  size.  On 
the  contrary,  every  one  looks  upon  the  very  large  Jewish  nose  as 
ugly.  The  reason  is  that  in  judging  of  the  face  Fashion  has  been 
displaced  by  aesthetic  Taste,  whose  motto  is  Moderation,  and  which 
is  based  on  a  knowledge  of  the  cosmic  laws  of  beauty.  Savages 
have  Fashion  but  no  Taste.  We  have  both ;  but  Taste  is 
gradually  demolishing  Fashion,  like  other  relics  of  barbarism. 

Sometimes  our  estimate  of  the  nose,  as  of  other  features,  may 
be  influenced  by  non-aesthetic  considerations — by  prejudices  of 
race,  aristocracy,  etc.  "In  Italy,"  says  Mantegazza,  "we  call  a 
long  nose  aristocratic  (especially  if  it  is  aquiline)  perhaps  because 
conquerors  with  long  noses,  Greeks  and  Romans,  have  subjected 
the  indigenous  small-nosed  inhabitants."  But  the  Italians  are 
not  the  only  people  who,  if  asked  to  choose  between  a  nose  too 
large  or  one  too  small,  would  ask  for  the  former.  And  the  cause 
of  this  preference  is  suggested  very  forcibly  in  these  remarks  of 
Grose :  "  Convex  faces,  prominent  features,  and  large  aquiline 
noses,  though  differing  much  from  beauty,  still  give  an  air  of 
dignity  to  their  owners;  whereas  concave  faces,  flat,  snub,  or 
broken  noses,  always  stamp  a  meanness  and  vulgarity.  Tfie  one 
seems  to  have  passed  through  the  limits  of  beauty,  the  other  never 
to  have  arrived  at  them" 


488  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   NOSE 

The  flat,  irregular  nose  of  savages  and  semi-civilised  peoples, 
with  its  visible  nostrils  and  imperfectly  developed  bridge,  being 
intermediate  between  the  ape's  nose  and  our  own,  we  are  naturally 
led  to  infer  that  the  nose  has  been  gradually  developed  into  the 
shape  now  regarded  as  most  perfect  by  good  judges  of  Beauty. 
To  what  are  we  indebted  for  this  favourable  change — to  Natural 
or  to  Sexual  Selection  ?  In  other  words,  is  the  present  perfected 
shape  of  the  nose  of  any  use  to  us,  or  is  it  purely  ornamental  1 

It  appears  that  both  these  laws  have  acted  in  subtle  combina- 
tion to  improve  our  nasal  organ.  The  nose  is  a  sort  of  funnel  for 
warming  the  air  on  its  way  to  the  sensitive  lungs.  In  cold  lati- 
tudes a  long  nose  would  therefore  be  an  advantage  favoured  by 
Natural  Selection ;  and  it  is  noteworthy  that  in  general  the  flat- 
nosed  peoples  live  in  warm  climes.  There  are  exceptions,  however, 
notably  the  Esquimaux,  showing  that  this  hypothesis  does  not 
entirely  cover  the  facts. 

Let  us  examine,  therefore,  the  second  function  of  the  nasal 
organ.  The  external  nose  is  a  sort  of  filter  for  keeping  organic 
impurities  out  of  the  lungs.  At  the  entrance  of  the  nostrils  there 
are  a  number  of  fine  hairs  which  serve  to  keep  out  the  dust.  If 
any  particles  manage  to  get  beyond  this  first  fortress,  they  are 
liable  to  be  arrested  by  the  rows  of  more  minute,  microscopic 
hairs,  or  cilia,  which  line  the  mucous  membrane  and  keep  up  a 
constant  downward  movement,  by  means  of  which  dusty  intruders 
are  expelled  and  the  air  filtered.  Esquimaux  living  in  snowfields, 
and  savages  in  the  forests  and  grass-carpeted  meadows,  do  not 
need  these  filters  so  much  as  we  do  in  our  dusty  cities  and  along 
dusty  country  roads ;  hence  their  noses  have  remained  more  like 
those  of  the  arboreal  apes,  while  ours  have  grown  larger,  so  as  to 
yield  a  larger  surface  of  sifting  hairs  and  cilia.  When  we  think 
of  the  dusty  American  prairies  and  the  African  and  Asian  deserts, 
can  we  wonder,  accordingly,  that  the  American  Indians,  as  well  as 
the  nomadic  Arabs  and  Jews,  have  such  immense  noses?  The 
t  heory  seems  fanciful,  if  not  grotesque  \  but  perhaps  there  is  more 
in  it  than  appears  at  first  sight. 

Even  if  both  these  hypotheses  should  prove  untenable,  there  is 
a  third  consideration  which  alone  suffices  to  account  for  the  de- 
velopment of  the  European  nose.  The  nose  has  a  most  important 
musico-philological  function.  The  language  of  savages  often  con- 
sists of  only  a  few  hundred  words,  while  ours  is  so  complicated 


THE  NOSE  439 

that  it  requires  the  co-operation  of  the  vocal  cords,  and  the  cavities 
of  the  mouth  and  the  nose  to  produce  the  countless  modifications 
of  speech  and  song  which  make  us  listen  with  so  much  pleasure  to 
an  eloquent  speaker  or  a  great  singer.  The  subject  is  far  too 
complicated  with  anatomical  details  to  be  fully  explained  here, 
and  the  reader  must  be  referred  to  a  full  discussion  (not  from  the 
evolutionary  point  of  view,  however)  to  Professor  Georg  Hermann 
von  Meyer's  elaborate  treatise  on  The  Organs  of  Speech,  chap.  iii. 

A  few  points,  however,  must  be  noted  here.  The  nasal  air- 
passage,  "  with  its  two  narrow  openings  and  intermediate  greater 
width,  possesses  the  general  form  -of  a  resonator,  and  there  can  be 
no  doubt  but  that  it  has  a  corresponding  influence,  and  that  the 
tones  with  which  the  air  passing  through  it  vibrates  are  strength- 
ened by  its  resonance.  The  larger  the  nasal  cavity  the  more 
powerful  the  resonance,  and,  consequently,  the  reinforcement  ex- 
perienced by  the  tone.  ...  In  consequence  of  the  peculiarity  of 
the  walls  of  the  nasal  cavity,  it  appears  that  sounds  uttered  with 
the  nasal  resonance,  particularly  the  nasal  vowels,  are  fuller  and 
more  ample  than  the  same  sounds  when  strengthened  by  the 
resonance  of  the  cavity  of  the  mouth.  The  general  impression  of 
fulness  and  richness  conveyed  by  the  French  language  arises  from 
its  wealth  in  nasal  vowels ;  and  it  is  for  this  reason  that  second- 
rate  tragic  actors  like  to  give  a  nasal  resonance  to  all  the  vowels 
in  the  pathetic  speeches  of  their  heroic  parts." 

Further,  it  is  of  great  importance  to  bear  in  mind  "  that  the 
resonance  of  the  nasal  cavity  also  plays  a  part  in  the  formation  of 
•non-nasal  articulate  sounds,"  appearing  here  as  a  mere  reinforce- 
ment of  the  resonance  of  the  cavity  of  the  mouth,  and  free  from 
the  nasal  twang.  Indeed,  paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  an  infallible 
way  to  make  our  speech  sound  "  nasal "  is  to  keep  the  air  out  of 
the  nose  by  clasping  it  tightly ;  whereas  if  the  nasal  passage 
remains  open  the  nasal  twang  is  replaced  by  an  agreeable  reson- 
ance. What  could  more  forcibly  illustrate  the  importance  of  a 
well-developed  nose  ? 

Now  there  are  several  groups  of  muscles  attached  to  the  lower 
cartilages  of  the  nose, — parts  which  are  imperfectly  developed  in 
apes  and  negroes.  The  constant  exercise  of  these,  during  many 
generations,  in  the  service  of  speech,  in  expressing  several  emotions, 
and  in  heavy  breathing,  suffice  to  account,  on  accepted  physio- 
logical principles,  for  the  gradual  enlargement  of  the  resonant  tube 
which  we  call  the  nose. 

So  much  for  Natural  or  Utilitarian  Selection.  But  Sexual 
Selection  or  Romantic  Love  plays  also  a  most  important  role  in 


440  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

the  development  of  the  nose.  Thef  quotations  from  Pascal  and 
Schopenhauer  made  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter  show  that 
the  efficacy  of  Sexual  Selection  was  recognised  long  before  Darwin 
had  coined  the  term.  As  soon  as  a  refined  aesthetic  taste  appears, 
it  rejects  ugly  forms  of  the  nose.  It  rejects,  for  instance,  open, 
visible  nostrils,  because  they  are  a  scavenging  apparatus,  unaesthetic 
to  behold,  though  the  savage,  having  no  taste,  is  not  thus  offended. 
It  gives  the  preference,  in  the  second  place,  to  the  long  nose,  on 
musical  grounds,  because  its  owner  has  a  more  sonorous  speech. 
It  scorns  the  snub-nose  because  of  its  simian  suggest! veness,  and 
dislikes  the  excessively  large  and  aquiline  nose  because  it  is  an 
exaggerated  form,  which  has  passed  beyond  the  delicate  dimensions 
and  subtle  curves  of  beauty. 


GREEK  AND   HEBREW  NOSES 

This  checking  of  excessive  development  in  the  direction  at  first 
prescribed  by  the  cosmic  laws  of  beauty  is  indeed  one  of  the  main 
functions  of  Sexual  Selection,  without  which  our  mouths  would 
gradually  become  too  small,  our  eyes  and  noses  too  large,  our 
foreheads  too  high,  our  hair  too  scant,  etc. 

Why,  for  instance,  have  the  Jews  such  large  noses  compared 
with  the  Greeks  1  Evidently  because  Taste — which,  though  com- 
monly associated  with  Romantic  Love,  may,  in  a  highly  aesthetic 
nation,  act  independently  of  it — did  not  restrain  the  excessive 
development  of  the  Jewish  nose.  The  ancient  Hebrews  were  not 
an  aesthetic  nation,  like  the  Greeks.  The  finest  works  of  sculp- 
ture ever  created  were  made  by  the  Greeks,  while  the  Hebrews 
practically  had  no  sculpture  at  all — not  even  such  works  as  were 
produced  by  Assyrians  and  Egyptians.  And  if  any  further  proof 
were  needed  of  the  statement  that  the  ancient  Hebrews  had  little 
taste  for  beauty  it  might  be  found  in  the  fact  that  Solomon, 
esteemed  a  great  judge  of  feminine  charms,  compares  his  love's 
nose  to  "the  tower  of  Lebanon,  which  looketh  toward  Damascus." 

The  admission  which  I  have  just  made  that  there  may  be  a 
sort  of  aesthetic  selection  independent  of  real  Romantic  Love,  does 
not  militate  against  the  general  thesis  of  this  book  :  that  Love  is 
the  cause  of  Beauty,  as  Beauty  is  the  cause  of  Love.  For  though 
the  Greek  artists  knew  what  the  shape  and  size  of  a  beautiful 
nose  should  be,  there  are  cogent  reasons  for  believing  that  "  Greek 
noses  "  were  rare  even  among  the  ancient  Greeks,  thanks  to  their 
habit  of  sacrificing  Romantic  Love  to  the  dragon  chaperon.  Hear 
what  Ruskin  has  to  say,  in  his  Aratra  Pentelici,  about  the  Greek 


THE  NOSE  441 

features  in  general :  "  Will  you  look  again  at  the  series  of  coins  of 
the  best  time  of  Greek  art •;  which  I  have  just  set  before  you? 
Are  any  of  these  goddesses  or  nymphs  very  beautiful  1  Certainly 
the  Junos  are  not.  Certainly  the  Demeters  are  not.  The  Siren 
and  Arethusa  have  well-formed  and  regular  features;  but  I  am 
quite  sure  that  if  you  look  at  them  without  prejudice,  you  will 
think  neither  reaches  even  the  average  standard  of  pretty  English 
girls.  The  Venus  Urania  suggests  at  first  the  idea  of  a  very 
charming  person,  but  you  will  find  there  is  no  real  depth  nor 
sweetness  in  the  contours,  looked  at  closely.  And  remember, 
these  are  chosen  examples ;  the  best  I  can  find  of  art  current  in 
Greece  at  the  great  time ;  and  even  if  I  were  to  take  the  cele- 
brated statues,  of  which  only  two  or  three  are  extant,  not  one  of 
them  excels  the  Venus  of  Melos;  and  she,  as  I  have  already 
asserted  in  The  Queen  of  the  Air,  has  nothing  notable  in  feature 
except  dignity  and  simplicity.  Of  Athena  I  do  not  know  one 
authentic  type  of  great  beauty;  but  the  intense  ugliness  which 
the  Greeks  could  tolerate  in  their  symbolism  of  her  will  be  con- 
vincingly proved  to  you  by  the  coin  represented  in  Plate  VI. 
You  need  only  look  at  two  or  three  vases  of  the  best  time  to 
assure  yourselves  that  beauty  of  feature  was,  in  popular  art,  not 
only  unattained,  but  unattempted;  and  finally — and  this  you 
may  accept  as  a  conclusive  proof  of  the  Greek  insensitiveness  to 
the  most  subtle  beauty — there  is  little  evidence,  even  in  their 
literature,  and  none  in  their  art,  of  their  having  ever  perceived 
any  beauty  in  infancy  or  early  childhood." 

Nevertheless,  it  was  to  the  contours  of  childhood  that  the 
Greek  artists  apparently  went  for  their  ideal  of  the  divine  nose. 
Greek  beauty  was  youthful  masculine  beauty;  and  the  "Greek 
nose "  is  one  which  not  only  is  straight  in  itself,  but  forms  a 
straight  line  with  the  forehead.  In  other  words,  there  is  no 
hollow  at  the  root  of  the  nose,  where  it  meets  the  forehead. 
Now  the  absence  of  this  cavity  is  characteristic  of  youth,  and  is 
owing  to  the  imperfect  development  of  the  brain  cavities.  Later 
in  life  these  cavities  bulge  forwards  and  produce  the  hollow, 
which,  therefore,  is  an  indication  of  superior  cranial  development 
and  higher  intellectual  powers.  Hence,  as  Professor  Kollmann 
suggests,  the  object  of  the  Greek  artists  in  making  the  nose  of 
their  deities  form  a  straight  line  with  the  forehead,  was  probably 
to  give  them  the  stamp  of  eternal  youth ;  which  would  thus 
appear  to  have  been  considered  a  more  important  attribute  even 
than  the  expression  of  superior  masculine  intellectual  power, 
which  we  associate  with  the  hollow  at  the  junction  of  nose  %nd 


442  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

forehead,  and  for  which  reason  we  do  not  admire  it  in  women  i' 
too  pronounced.  Nevertheless,  even  in  women  the  cosmic  laws  of 
Beauty  call  for  a  gentle  curve  instead  of  a  perfectly  straight  line ; 
but  the  more  subtle  the  curve  the  greater  is  its  beauty ;  whereas 
the  nose  itself  may  be  perfectly  straight  on  its  upper  edge,  because 
it  forms  a  dividing  line  of  the  face  into  two  symmetric  halves,  and 
by  its  contrasting  straightness  heightens  the  beauty  of  the  sur- 
rounding facial  curves. 

To  sum  up :  the  Greek's  admiration  of  such  features  as  arc 
naturally  associated  with  youthful  masculine  beauty  no  doubt  led 
him,  in  choosing  a  wife,  to  give  the  preference  to  similar  features, 
including  the  "  Greek  "  nose.  Yet  in  the  absence  of  opportunities 
for  courtship,  Sexual  Selection  could  not  operate  very  extensively ; 
hence  it  is  probable  that  ungainly  noses,  though  not  so  extravagant 
as  among  the  Semitic  races,  were  common  enough  in  Greece  as  in 
Rome.  In  the  Dark  Ages  hideous  noses  must  have  prevailed 
everywhere,  as  might  be  inferred  from  the  facts  that  Romantic 
Love  was  unknown,  and  physical  beauty  looked  on  as  a  sinful 
possession,  even  if  the  painted  and  sculptured  portraits  did  not 
prove  it  to  our  eyes  in  most  instances. 

Regarding  modern  noses  it  may  be  said  that  the  nose  is  such  a 
prominent  feature  that  more  has  been  done  for  its  improvement, 
through  the  agency  of  Love  or  Sexual  Selection,  than  for  the 
mouth  or  any  other  feature,  excepting  the  eye.  The  average 
Englishman's  nose  of  to-day,  for  example,  is  a  tolerably  shapely 
organ,  and  yet  his  ancestors  were  not  exactly  distinguished  for 
nasal  beauty,  according  to  a  close  observer  and  student  of  por- 
traiture, Mr.  G.  A.  Simcox,  who  remarks  that  "  sometimes  both 
Danes  and  Saxons  had  their  fair  proportions  of  snub-noses  and 
pug-noses,  but  when  they  escaped  that  catastrophe  the  Danish 
nose  tended  to  be  a  beak  (rather  a  hawk's  beak  than  an  eagle's), 
while  the  Saxon  nose  tends  to  be  a  proboscis." 

Yet  even  at  this  date  perfect  noses  are  rare,  and  it  is  easy  to 
see  why.  In  the  first  place,  it  takes  many  generations  to  wipe 
out  entirely  the  ugliness  inherited  from  our  unsesthetic  ancestors  ; 
secondly,  Romantic  Love,  based  on  aesthetic  admiration,  is  still 
very  commonly  ignored  in  the  marriage  market  in  favour  of 
considerations  of  rank  and  wealth ;  and  thirdly,  a  lover,  infatuated 
by  his  sweetheart's  fascinating  eyes,  is  apt  to  overlook  her  large 
nose  or  mouth — till  after  the  honeymoon. 


THE  NOSE  443 


FASHION   AND   COSMETIC   SI7EGERT 

Inasmuch  as  the  civilised  races  of  Europe  have  so  long  been 
indifferent  to  their  ugly  noses,  we  can  hardly  wonder  that  bar- 
barians should  not  only  disregard  their  nasal  caricatures,  but  even 
exaggerate  their  grotesqueness  deliberately.  We  have  already 
seen  how  certain  tribes  habitually  flatten  their  already  flat  noses. 
Moreover,  "  in  all  quarters  of  the  world  the  septum,  and  more 
rarely  the  wings,  of  the  nose  are  pierced ,  rings,  sticks,  feathers, 
and  other  ornaments  being  inserted  into  the  holes."  "  In  Persia 
one  still  finds  the  nose-ring  through  one  side  of  a  woman's  nostril ; " 
and  Professor  Flower  states  that  such  rings  are  often  worn  by 
female  servants  who  accompany  English  families  returning  from 
India. 

Captain  Cook,  in  the  account  of  his  first  voyage,  says  of  the 
east-coast  Australians :  "  Their  principal  ornament  is  the  bone 
which  they  thrust  through  the  cartilage  which  divides  the  nostrils 
from  each  other.  ...  As  this  bone  is  as  thick  as  a  man's  finger, 
and  between  five  and  six  inches  long,  it  reaches  quite  across  the 
face,  and  so  effectually  stops  up  both  the  nostrils  that  they  are 
forced  to  keep  their  mouths  wide  open  for  breath,  and  snuffle  so 
when  they  attempt  to  speak  that  they  are  scarcely  intelligible 
even  to  each  other." 

This  last  sentence  bears  out  our  assertion  regarding  the  philo- 
logical or  conversational  importance  of  the  nose.  And  there  is 
another  lesson  to  be  learned  from  these  barbarian  mutilations  of 
the  nose.  If  Huns,  Tahitians,  and  Hottentots  are  able  to  make 
their  noses  as  delightfully  ugly  as  they  please,  why  should  not  we 
utilise  the  plastic  character  of  the  nasal  cartilages  for  beautifying 
ourselves  ?  Says  a  specialist :  "  Much  can  be  done  by  an  ingenious 
surgeon  in  restoration  and  improvement.  A  nose  that  is  too  flat 
can  be  raised,  one  with  unequal  apertures  can  be  modified,  one  too 
thin  can  be  expanded.  Cosmetic  surgery  is  rich  in  devices  here, 
all  of  which  are  very  available  in  children  and  young  persons,  less 
so  when  years  have  hardened  and  stiffened  the  cartilages  and  bones." 

Thus  may  Cupid  employ  a  medical  artist  as  an  assistant  in  his 
efforts  at  improving  the  physical  beauty  of  mankind.  Needless  to 
add  that  only  a  first-class  surgeon  should  ever  be  allowed  to 
meddle  with  the  features. 

Cosmetic  surgery  has  already  reached  such  perfection  that  it 
can  even  make  "a  good,  living,  fleshly  nose.  It  will  transplant 
you  one  from  the  arm  or  the  forehead,  Eomau  or  Grecian,  & 


444  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

volonte ;  it  will  graft  it  adroitly  into  the  middle  of  the  face,  with 
two  regular  nostrils  and  a  handsome  bridge ;  and  it  will  almost 
challenge  Nature  herself  to  improve  on  the  model "  (Brinton  and 
Napheys). 

Medical  men  are  daily  complaining  in  a  more  clamorous  chorua 
that  their  profession  is  overcrowded.  Why  don't  some  of  them  in 
every  city  and  town  make  a  specialty  of  cosmetic  surgery  and 
hygienic  advice?  Why  leave  this  remunerative  field  entirely  in 
the  hands  of  dangerous  quacks  who  alone  have  enterprise  and 
sense  enough  to  advertise  ? 

As  illustrations  of  what  may  be  done  in  this  direction,  two 
points  may  be  noted.  A  French  surgeon,  Dr.  Cid,  noticed  that 
persons  who  wear  eyeglasses  are  apt  to  have  long  and  thin  noses. 
The  thought  occurred  to  him  that  this  might  be  due  to  the  com- 
pression of  the  arteries  which  carry  blood  to  the  nose,  by  the 
springs  of  the  glasses ;  so  he  constructed  a  special  apparatus  for 
compressing  these  arteries,  and  by  attaching  it  to  a  young  girl's 
large  and  fleshy  nose,  succeeded  in  reducing  its  size.  Why  should 
people  worry  themselves  and  frighten  others  with  ugly  noses  when 
they  can  be  so  easily  improved  ? 

The  second  point  is  still  more  simple.  It  is  important  that 
the  nose  should  occupy  exactly  the  middle  of  the  face,  so  as  to 
secure  bilateral  symmetry.  Yet  Welcker,  who  made  a  number  of 
accurate  observations  on  skulls,  plaster  casts  of  the  dead,  as  well 
as  on  the  living  countenance,  noted  that  perfect  symmetry  is  very 
rarely  found.  The  obliqueness  is  sometimes  at  the  root,  some- 
times at  the  tip  of  the  nose,  and  the  cause  of  the  deviation  from  a 
straight  line  is  attributed  to  the  habit  most  persons  have  of 
sleeping  exclusively  on  one  side, — a  practice  which  is  also  objec- 
tionable on  other  grounds.  Mantegazza,  however,  suggests  that, 
as  he  has  found  the  deviation  almost  always  toward  the  right  side, 
it  may  be  due  to  our  habit  of  always  taking  our  handkerchief  in 
the  right  hand ;  and  the  same  view  is  held  by  Drs.  Brinton  and 
Napheys.  So  that  we  have  here  an  additional  argument  in  favour 
of  ambidexterity. 

The  New  York  Medical  and  Surgical  Reporter  for  November 
1,  1884,  prints  a  lecture  by  Dr.  J.  B.  Roberts  on  "The  Cure  of 
Crooked  Noses  by  a  New  Method,"  which,  as  it  is  not  conspicuous 
and  hardly  leaves  a  scar,  may  be  commended  to  the  attention  of 
those  afflicted  with  nasal  deformities.  The  pin  method,  he  says, 
Is  applicable  "  even  to  those  slight  deformities  whose  chief  annoy- 
ance is  an  aesthetic  and  cosmetic  one.  I  leave  the  pins  in  position 
for  about  two  weeks." 


THE  NOSE  445 

Red  noses,  if  due  to  exposure,  can  be  readily  whitened  by  one 
of  the  methods  to  be  discussed  in  the  chapter  on  the  complexion. 
If  due  to  disease,  they  call  for  medical  treatment ;  if  to  intemper- 
ance or  tight  lacing,  moral  and  aesthetic  reform  is  the  only  possible 
cure. 

NOSE-BREATHING   AND   HEALTH 

Owing  to  its  tendency  toward  unsightly  redness  and  malforma- 
tion, the  nose  is  very  apt  to  be  looked  at  from  a  comic  point  of 
view.  Wits  and  caricaturists  fix  on  it  habitually  for  their 
nefarious  purposes,  as  if  it  were  a  sort  of  facial  clown.  Indeed, 
ninety-nine  persons  in  a  hundred,  if  questioned  regarding  the 
functions  of  the  nose,  would  know  no  answer  but  this  :  that  it  is 
sometimes  ornamental,  and  is  remotely  connected  with  the 
"  almost  useless  "  sense  of  smell. 

We  have  seen,  however,  that  besides  being  ornamental  per  set 
the  nose  plays  a  most  important  aesthetic — as  well  as  utilitarian — 
toU  in  giving  sonority  and  variety  to  human  speech;  and  that  it 
is,  further,  of  great  use  as  an  apparatus  for  warming,  moistening, 
and  filtering  the  air  before  it  enters  the  lungs.  Hence  the  im- 
portance of  nose -breathing.  Professor  Reclam  states  that  city 
people  at  the  age  of  thirty  usually  have  a  whole  gramme  of  cal- 
careous dust  in  their  lungs,  which  they  can  never  again  get  rid  of, 
and  which  may  at  any  time  engender  dangerous  disease.  This  is 
one  of  the  bad  results  of  mouth-breathing,  but  by  no  means  the 
only  one.  "  The  continued  irritation  from  dry,  cold,  and  unfiltered 
air  upon  the  mucous  membrane  of  the  upper  air  tract  soon  results," 
says  Dr.  T.  R.  French,  "  in  the  establishment  of  catarrhal  inflam- 
mation, the  parts  most  affected  being  the  tongue,  pharynx,  and 
larynx.  .  .  .  The  habit  of  breathing  through  the  mouth  interferes 
with  general  nutrition.  The  subjects  of  this  habit  are  usually 
anaemic,  spare,  and  dyspeptic." 

That  mouth-breathing  at  night  leaves  a  disagreeable  taste  in 
the  mouth  and  leads  to  snoring,  thus  interfering  with  refreshing 
sleep,  has  already  been  stated.  It  also  injures  the  teeth  and  gums 
by  exposing  them  all  night  to  the  dry  air.  And  in  the  daytime  it 
compels  one  to  keep  the  mouth  wide  open,  which  imparts  a  rustic  if 
not  semi-iiiotic  expression  to  the  face.  Moreover,  think  of  the  filthy 
dust  you  shallow  in  walking  along  the  street  with  your  mouth  open. 
However,  it  is  useless  to  advise  people  on  such  matters.  An 
attempt  is  made  for  a  day  or  two  to  reform,  and  then — the  whole 
matter  is  forgotten.  These  points  are  therefore  noted  here  not  with 
any  missionary  intentions,  but  merely  for  their  scientific  interest. 


446  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 


COSMETIC   VALUE   OF   ODOURS 

We  come  now  to  the  fourth  important  function  of  the  nose — 
the  sense  of  smell.  What  has  this  to  do  with  Personal  Beauty? 
A  great  deal.  In  the  first  place,  is  not  the  flower-like  fragrance 
of  a  lovely  maiden  a  personal  charm  that  has  been  sung  of  by  a 
thousand  poets,  of  all  times  ?  "  The  fragrant  bosom  of  Andromache 
and  of  Aphrodite  finds  a  place  in  Homer's  poetry,"  as  Professor 
Bain  remarks;  and  an  eccentric  German  professor,  Dr.  Jager  of 
Stuttgart,  even  wrote  a  book  a  few  years  ago  on  the  Discovery  of 
the  Soul,  in  which  he  endeavoured  to  prove  that  the  whole  mystery 
of  Love  lies  in  the  intoxicating  personal  perfumes. 

It  is  not  with  such  fancies,  however,  that  we  are  concerned 
here.  It  can  be  shown  on  purely  scientific  grounds  that  the  cause 
of  Personal  Beauty  would  gain  an  immense  advantage  if  people 
would  train  and  refine  their  olfactory  nerves  systematically,  as 
they  do  their  eyes  and  ears.  Unfortunately,  Kant's  absurd  notion, 
expressed  a  century  ago,  that  it  is  not  worth  while  to  cultivate 
the  sense  of  smell,  has  been  countenanced  to  the  present  day  by 
the  erroneous  views  held  by  the  leading  men  of  science,  including 
Darwin,  who  wrote  that  "  the  sense  of  smell  is  of  extremely  slight 
service  "  to  man. 

In  an  article  on  the  "  Gastronomic  Value  of  Odours,"  which 
appeared  in  the  Contemporary  Review  for  November  1886,  I 
pointed  out  that  this  under-valuation  of  the  sense  of  smell  i* 
explained  by  the  fact  that  the  sense  of  taste  has  hitherto  been 
credited  with  all  the  countless  flavours  inherent  in  food,  whereas, 
in  fact,  taste  includes  only  four  sensations  of  gastronomic  value — 
sweet,  sour,  bitter,  and  saline,  all  other  "  flavours  "  being  in  reality 
odours;  as  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  by  clasping  the  nose  we 
cannot  distinguish  between  a  lime  and  a  lemon,  different  kinds  if 
confectionery,  of  cheese,  of  nuts,  of  meat,  etc. 

Now  it  is  well  known  that  most  people  show  a  most  amazing 
tolerance  to  insipid,  badly-cooked  food,  gulping  it  down  as  rapidly 
as  possible  ;  and  why?  Simply  because  they  do  not  know  that  in 
order  to  enjoy  our  meals  we  must  eat  slowly,  and,  while  masti- 
cating, continually  exhale  the  aroma-laden  air  through  the  nose, 
(mind,  not  inhale  but  exliale).  This  is  what  epicures  do  uncon- 
sciously; and  look  at  the  results  !  No  dyspepsia,  no  anaemia  and 
sickly  pallor,  no  walking  skeletons ; — and  surely  a  slight  embon- 
point is  preferable  to  leanness  from  the  point  of  view  of  Peraonal 
Beauty. 


THE  NOSE  447 

If  this  gastronomic  secret  were  generally  known,  people  would 
insist  on  having  better  cooked  food ;  dyspepsia,  and  leanness,  and 
a  thousand  infirmities  hostile  to  Beauty  would  disappear,  and  in 
course  of  time  everybody  would  be  as  sleek  and  handsome  and 
rosy-cheeked  as  a  professional  epicure. 

Nor  is  this  the  only  way  in  which  refinement  of  the  sense  of 
smell  would  benefit  Personal  Beauty.  In  consequence  of  the 
criminally  superstitious  dread  of  night  air,  the  atmosphere  in 
most  bedrooms  is  as  foul,  compared  to  fresh  air,  as  a  street  puddk1 
after  a  shower  compared  to  a  mountain  brook.  I  have  seen  well- 
dressed  persons  in  America  and  Italy  take  into  their  mouths  the 
shamefully  filthy  and  disease-soaked  banknotes  current  in  those 
countries ;  and  I  have  seen  others  shudder  at  this  sight  who,  if 
their  smell  were  as  refined  as  their  sight,  would  have  shuddered 
equally  at  the  foul  air  in  their  bedrooms,  which  diminishes  their 
vital  energy  and  working  power  by  one-half.  Architects,  of  course, 
will  make  no  provision  for  proper  ventilation  as  long  as  they  are 
not  compelled  to  do  so.  Why  should  they?  They  don't  even 
care,  in  building  a  theatre,  how  many  hundreds  of  people  will 
some  day  be  burnt  in  it,  in  consequence  of  their  neglect  of  the 
simplest  precautions  for  exit. 

One  more  important  consideration.  When  you  leave  the  city 
for  a  few  weeks  everybody  will  exclaim  on  your  return,  "  Why, 
how  well  you  look !  where  have  you  been  ? "  But  wherein  lies 
this  cosmetic  magic  of  country  air  ?  Not  in  its  oxygen,  for  it  has 
been  proved,  by  accurate  chemical  tests,  that  in  regard  to  the 
quantity  of  oxygen  there  is  not  the  slightest  difference  between 
city  and  country  air.  What,  then,  is  the  secret  ? 

I  am  convinced,  from  numerous  experiments,  that  the  value  ot 
country  air  lies  partly  in  its  tonic  fragrance,  partly  in  the  absence 
of  depressing,  foid  odours.  The  great  cosmetic  and  hygienic 
value  of  deep-breathing  has  been  proved  in  the  chapter  on  the 
Chest.  Now  the  tonic  value  of  fragrant  meadow  or  forest  air  lies 
in  this — that  it  causes  us  involuntarily  to  breathe  deeply,  in  order 
to  drink  in  as  many  mouthfuls  of.  this  luscious  aerial  Tokay  as 
possible  :  whereas  in  the  city  the  air  is — well,  say  unfragrant  and 
uninviting ;  and  the  constant  fear  of  gulping  down  a  pint  of  deadly 
sewer  gas  discourages  deep  breathing.  The  general  pallor  and 
nervousness  of  New  York  people  have  often  been  noted.  The 
cause  is  obvious.  New  York  has  the  dirtiest  streets  of  any  city 
in  the  world,  except  Constantinople  and  Canton ;  and,  moreover, 
it  is  surrounded  by  oil-refineries,  which  sometimes  for  days  poison 
the  whole  city  with  the  stifling  fumes  of  petroleum,  so  that  one 


448  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAU1T 

hardly  dares  to  breathe  at  all.  No  wonder  that,  by  universal 
consent,  there  is  more  Fashion  than  Beauty  in  New  York.  And 
ao  wonder  that  it  is  becoming  more  and  more  customary,  for  all 
who  can  afford  it,  to  spend  six  to  eight  months  of  the  year  in  the 
country. 

THE  FOREHEAD 

BEAUTY   AND   BEAIN 

It  has  been  stated  already  that,  anatomically  considered,  the 
forehead  is  not  a  part  of  the  face  but  of  the  cranium.  From  an 
artistic  and  popular  point  of  view,  however,  the  forehead  is  a  part 
of  the  face,  and  a  most  important  one.  Modern  taste  fully 
endorses  the  ancient  law  of  facial  proportion,  which  makes  the 
height  of  the  forehead  equal  to  the  length  of  the  nose,  and  to  the 
distance  from  the  tip  of  the  nose  to  the  tip  of  the  chin.  "  Fore- 
heads villainous  low"  are  objectionable,  because  associated  with  a 
vulgar  unintellectual  type  of  man,  and  too  vividly  suggestive  of 
our  simian  ancestors.  Foreheads  abnormally  high,  though  pre- 
ferable to  the  other  extreme,  displease,  because  they  violate  the 
law  of  facial  proportion.  We  excuse  them  in  men,  because  they 
are  commonly  expressive  of  intellectual  power.  But  in  women  a 
high  forehead  is  always  objectionable,  because  it  gives  them  a 
masculine  appearance.  Hence  Romantic  Love,  which  cannot  exist 
without  sexual  contrasts,  and  which  aims  at  making  woman  a 
perfect  embodiment  of  the  laws  of  Beauty,  eliminates  girls  with 
too  high  foreheads.  Yet  at  the  command  of  Fashion  thousands  of 
maidens  deliberately  prevent  men  from  falling  in  love  with  them 
by  combing  back  their  hair  and  giving  their  foreheads  a  masculine 
appearance,  instead  of  coyly  hiding  it  under  a  fringe  or  "  bang." 

The  fact  that  the  feminine  forehead,  though  more  perpendicular 
than  the  masculine  at  the  lower  part,  slants  backward  in  its  upper 
part  in  a  more  pronounced  angle,  is  another  reason  why  women 
should  cover  up  this  part  of  their  forehead,  which  Sexual  Selection 
has  not  yet  succeeded  in  moulding  into  perfect  shape.  For  the 
receding  forehead  is  universally  recognised  as  a  sign  of  inferior 
culture.  Everybody  knows  what  is  meant  by  Camper's  facial 
angle,  which  is  formed  by  a  horizontal  line  drawn  from  the  opening 
of  the  ear  to  the  nasal  spine,  and  a  perpendicular  line  touching  the 
most  prominent  parts  of  the  forehead  and  front  teeth.  In  adult 
Europeans  Camper's  angle  rarely  exceeds  85  degrees.  The  average 
in  the  Caucasian  race  is  80° ;  in  the  yellow  races  75° ;  in  the 
negro  60°  to  70° ;  in  the  gorilla  31°.  In  antique  Greek  heads  the 


THE  FOREHEAD  449 

angle  is  sometimes  over  90e.  Says  Camper :  "  If  I  cause  the 
facial  line  to  fall  in  front,  I  have  an  antique  head ;  if  I  incline  it 
backwards,  I  have  the  head  of  a  negro ;  if  I  cause  it  to  incline  still 
further,  I  have  the  head  of  a  monkey ;  inclined  still  more,  I  have 
that  of  a  dog,  and,  lastly,  that  of  a  goose." 

It  appears,  however,  that  this  angle  has  more  value  as  a  test  of 
beauty  than  as  an  absolute  gauge  of  intellect.  Generally  speaking, 
there  is  no  doubt  a  correlation  between  a  bulging  forehead  and  a 
superior  intellect ;  but  individual  exceptions  to  this  rule  are  not 
infrequent.  Nor  is  it  at  all  difficult  to  account  for  them.  For 
intellectual  power  does  not  depend  so  much  on  the  size  and  shape 
of  the  skull  as  on  the  convoluted  structure  of  the  brain. 

Our  brain  consists  of  two  kinds  of  matter — the  white,  which  is 
inside,  and  the  gray,  which  covers  it.  The  white  substance  is  a 
complicated  telegraphic  network  for  conveying  messages  which  are 
sent  from  the  external  gray  cells.  It  has  been  proved,  by  compar- 
ing the  brains  of  man  and  various  animals,  that  the  amount  of 
intelligence  depends  not  so  much  on  the  absolute  size  of  the  brain, 
as  on  the  abundance  of  this  gray  matter.  And,  what  is  of  extreme 
importance  from  a  cosmetic  point  of  view,  the  gray  cells  are 
increased  in  number,  not  by  an  addition  to  the  absolute  size  or 
circumference  of  the  brain,  but  by  a  system  of  furrows  and  convolu- 
tions which  increase  the  surface  lining  of  the  brain  without  enlarg- 
ing its  visible  mass.  For  the  benefit  of  those  who  have  never  seen 
a  human  brain,  it  may  be  very  roughly  compared  to  the  convoluted 
kernel  of  an  English  walnut. 

Wherein  lies  the  aesthetic  significance  of  this  mode  of  cerebral 
evolution  1  It  prevents  our  head  from  becoming  too  large.  Have 
you  ever  considered  why  infants  appear  so  ugly  to  every  one  but 
their  mothers  ?  One  of  the  principal  reasons  is  that  their  heads  are 
twice  as  large  in  proportion  to  the  rest  of  the  body  as  those  of 
adults.  A  child's  stature  is  equal  to  four  times  the  height  of  its 
head,  an  adult's  to  eight  heads.  If  our  heads  continued  to  grow 
larger  as  our  minds  expanded,  from  generation  to  generation,  all 
the  proportions  of  human  stature  would  ultimately  be  violated. 
But  thanks  to  the  peculiar  mode  of  cerebral  evolution  just 
described,  Romantic  Love  may  continue  to  "  select "  in  accordance 
with  our  present  standards  of  beauty,  without  thereby  favouring 
the  survival  of  lower  intellectual  types. 

This  view  of  the  question  also  solves  a  difficulty  which  has 
staggered  even  such  a  leading  evolutionist  as  Mr.  Wallace,  viz., 
the  fact  that  the  oldest  prehistoric  skulls  that  have  been  found 
"surpass  the  average  of  modern  European  skulls  in  capacity." 


450  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

But  if  it  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  find  an  ordinary  stupid 
man  in  our  streets  with  a  larger  skull  than  that  of  many  a  clever 
brain-worker,  why  should  we  attach  so  much  importance  to  those 
prehistoric  skulls  ?  Had  their  brains  been  examined,  they  would 
doubtless  have  been  found  as  scantily  furrowed  as  those  of  a  big- 
headed  modern  anarchist. 


FASHIONABLE   DEFORMITY 

That  the  intellectual  powers  are  to  a  large  extent  independent 
of  the  particular  conformation  of  the  skull  is  shown  further  by  the 
circumstance  that  so  many  savage  tribes  have  for  centuries  followed 
the  fashion  of  artificially  shaping  their  heads,  without  any  apparent 
effect  on  their  minds.  Man's  brain  incites  him,  as  Topinard 
remarks,  "to  the  noblest  deeds,  as  well  as  to  the  most  ridiculous 
practices,  such  as  cutting  off  the  little  finger,  scorching  the  soles  of 
the  feet,  extracting  the  front  teeth,  or  deforming  the  head  because 
others  have  done  so  before  him"  But  of  all  silly  Fashions  hostile 
to  Beauty,  that  of  deforming  the  head  has  found  the  largest  number 
of  followers — always  excepting,  of  course,  the  modern  Wasp- Waist 
Mania. 

Deformed  skulls  have  been  found  in  the  Caucasus,  the  Crimea, 
Hungary,  Silesia,  France,  Belgium,  Switzerland,  in  Polynesia,  in 
different  parts  of  Asia,  etc.  "  But  the  classic  country  in  which 
these  deformations  are  found  is  America,"  says  Topinard.  "M. 
Gosse  has  described  sixteen  species  of  artificial  deformation,  ten  of 
which  were  in  American  skulls."  "Sometimes  the  infant  was 
fastened  on  a  plank  or  a  sort  of  cradle  with  leather  straps ;  or  they 
applied  pieces  of  clay,  pressing  them  down  with  small  boards  on 
the  forehead,  the  vertex,  and  the  occiput.  .  .  .  Sometimes  the 
head  was  kneaded  with  the  hands  or  knees,  or,  the  infant  being 
laid  on  the  back,  the  elbow  was  pressed  on  the  forehead.  Circular 
bands  were  sometimes  employed  to  support  the  sides  of  the 
head." 

"  Many  American  Indians,"  says  Darwin,  "  are  known  to  admire 
a  head  so  extremely  flattened  as  to  appear  to  us  idiotic.  The 
natives  of  the  north-western  coast  compress  the  head  into  a  pointed 
cone;"  while  the  inhabitants  of  Arakhan  "admire  a  broad,  smooth 
forehead,  and  in  order  to  produce  it,  they  fasten  a  plate  of  lead  on 
the  head  of  the  new-born  children." 

"  The  genuine  Turkish  skull  is  of  the  broad  Tartar  form,"  says 
Mr.  Tylor,  "while  the  nations  of  Greece  and  Asia  Minor  have 
oval  skulls,  which  gives  the  reason  why  at  Constantinople  it 


THE  FOREHEAD  451 

became  the  fashion  to  mould  the  babies'  skulls  round,  so  that  they 
grew  up  with  the  broad  head  of  the  conquering  race.  Relics  of 
such  barbarism  linger  on  in  the  midst  of  civilisation,  and  not  long 
ago  a  French  physician  surprised  the  world  by  the  fact  that  nurses 
in  Normandy  were  still  giving  the  children's  heads  a  sugar-loaf 
shape  by  bandages  and  a  tight  cap,  while  in  Brittany  they  pre- 
ferred to  press  it  round.  No  doubt  they  are  doing  so  to  this 
day." 

"  Failure  properly  to  mould  the  cranium  of  her  offspring,"  says 
Bancroft,  "  gives  to  the  Chinook  matron  the  reputation  of  a  lazy 
and  undutiful  mother,  and  subjects  the  neglected  children  to  the 
ridicule  of  their  young  companions,  50  despotic  is  fashion" 

Food  for  thought  will  also  be  found  in  these  remarks  by  Darwin. 
Ethnologists  believe,  he  says,  "  that  the  skull  is  modified  by  the 
kind  of  cradle  in  which  infants  sleep;"  and  Schaffhausen  is  con- 
vinced that  "  in  certain  trades,  such  as  that  of  a  shoemaker,  where 
the  head  is  habitually  held  forward,  the  forehead  becomes  more 
round  and  prominent."  If  this  is  true,  then  we  have  one  reason, 
at  least,  why  authors  have  such  large  foreheads. 

WBINKLES 

Wrinkles  in  the  face  are  signs  of  advanced  age,  or  disease,  or 
habits  of  profound  meditation,  or  frequent  indulgence  in  frowning 
and  grief.  The  wrinkles  on  a  thinker's  forehead  do  not  arouse  our 
disapproval,  because  they  are  often  eloquent  of  genius,  which 
excuses  a  slight  sacrifice  of  the  smoothness  of  skin  that  belongs  to 
perfect  Beauty.  In  women,  however,  we  apply  a  pure  and  strict 
aesthetic  standard,  wherefore  all  wrinkles  are  regarded  as  regrettable 
inroads  on  Personal  Beauty.  Old  women,  of  course,  form  an 
exception,  because  in  them  we  no  longer  look  for  youthful  Beauty, 
and  are  therefore  gratified  at  the  sight  of  wrinkles  and  folds  as 
stereotyped  forms  of  expression  bespeaking  a  life  rich  in  experiences, 
and  associated  with  the  veneration  due  to  old  age.  Such  wrinkles 
are  characteristic  but  not  beautiful ;  and  it  may  be  stated,  by  the 
way,  that  Alison's  whole  book  on  Taste  is  vitiated  by  the  ever- 
recurring  argument  in  which  he  forgets  that  we  may  take  a  per- 
sonal and  even  an  artistic  interest  in  a  thing  which  is  characteristic 
without  being  beautiful. 

In  youth,  while  the  skin  is  firm  and  elastic,  the  wrinkles  on  the 
forehead  or  around  the  eyes,  caused  by  a  frown  or  smile,  pass  away, 
leaving  no  more  trace  than  the  ripples  on  the  surface  of  a  lake. 
With  advancing  age  the  skin  becomes  looser  and  less  elastic,  sc 


452  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

that  frequent  repetition  of  those  movements  which  produce  a  fold 
in  the  skin  finally  leaves  an  indelible  mark  on  the  furrowed  coun- 
tenance. Woman's  skin,  being  commonly  better  "  padded  "  with 
fat  than  man's,  is  not  so  liable  to  wrinkles,  provided  attention  is 
paid  to  the  laws  of  health.  Mantegazza  suggests  that  the  simplest 
antidote  for  wrinkles  would  be  to  distend  the  folded  skin  again  by 
fattening  up.  The  daily  use  of  good  soap  and  slight  friction  helps 
to  ward  off  wrinkles  by  keeping  the  facial  muscles  toned  up  and  the 
skin  elastic. 

The  (voluntary)  mobility  of  the  skin  of  the  forehead,  to  which 
we  owe  our  wrinkles,  affords  an  interesting  illustration  of  the  way 
in  which  facial  muscles,  once  "useful,"  have  been  modified  for 
mere  purposes  of  expression.  "  Many  monkeys  have,  and  frequently 
use,  the  power  of  largely  moving  their  scalps  up  and  down."  This 
may  be  of  use  in  shaking  off  leaves,  flies,  rain,  etc.  But  man,  with 
his  covered  head,  needs  no  such  protection  ;  hence  most  of  us  have 
lost  the  power  of  moving  our  scalps.  A  correspondent  wrote  to 
Darwin,  however,  of  a  youth  who  could  pitch  several  heavy  books 
from  his  head  by  the  movement  of  the  scalp  alone;  and  many 
other  similar  cases  are  on  record,  attesting  our  simian  relationship. 
But  lower  down  on  the  forehead,  our  skin  has  universally  retained 
the  power  of  movement,  as  shown  in  frowning  and  the  expression 
of  various  emotions. 

At  first  sight  it  is  somewhat  difficult  to  understand  why  medi- 
tation should  wrinkle  the  skin ;  but  Darwin  explains  it  by  con- 
cluding that  frowning  (which,  oft  repeated,  results  in  wrinkles) 
"  is  not  the  expression  of  simple  reflection,  however  profound,  or 
of  attention,  however  close,  but  of  something  difficult  or  displeasing 
encountered  in  a  train  of  thought  or  in  action.  Deep  reflection 
can,  however,  seldom  be  long  carried  on  without  some  difficulty, 
so  that  it  will  generally  be  accompanied  by  a  frown." 

Fashionable  women  sometimes  endeavour  (unsuccessfully)  to 
distend  the  skin  and  remove  wrinkles  by  pasting  court-plaster  on 
certain  spots  in  the  face.  But  the  repulsive  fashion  of  wearing 
patches  of  court-plaster  all  over  the  face  as  an  ornament  ("  beauty- 
spots  ! "),  doubtless  had  its  origin  in  the  desire  of  some  aristocratic 
dame  to  conceal  pimples  or  other  skin  blemishes.  At  one  time 
women  even  submitted  to  the  fashion  of  pasting  on  the  face  and 
bosom  paper  flies,  fleas,  and  other  loathsome  creatures. 

The  African  monkeys  who  held  an  indignation  meeting  when 
they  first  heard  of  Darwin's  theory  of  the  descent  of  man,  had  pro- 
bably just  been  reading  a  history  of  human  Fashions, 


THE  COMPLEXION  451 

THE  COMPLEXION 

WHITE  VERSUS  BLACK 

w  The  charm  of  colour,  especially  in  the  intricate  infinities  of 
human  flesh,  is  so  mysterious  and  fascinating,  that  some  almost 
measure  a  painter's  merit  by  his  success  in  dealing  with  it,"  says 
Hegel ;  and  again  :  "  Man  is  the  only  animal  that  has  flesh  in  its 
display  of  the  infinities  of  colour."  "  No  loveliness  of  colour,  even 
of  the  humming  birds  or  the  birds  of  Paradise,  is  living,  is  glowing 
with  its  own  life,  but  shines  with  the  lustre  of  light  reflected,  and 
its  charm  is  from  without  and  not  from  within"  (^Esthetics, 
Kedney's  edition). 

For  a  metaphysician,  trained  to  scornfully  ignore  facts,  the 
difference  between  man  and  animals  is  in  these  sentences  pointed 
out  with  commendable  insight.  Regard  for  scientific  accuracy,  it 
is  true,  compels  us  to  qualify  Hegel's  generalisation,  for  not  only 
have  monkeys  bare  coloured  patches  in  their  faces,  and  elsewhere, 
which  are  subject  to  changes,  but  the  plumage  of  birds,  too,  is 
dulled  by  ill-health  and  brightened  by  health,  reaching  its  greatest 
brilliancy  in  the  season  of  Courtship,  thus  showing  a  connection 
between  internal  states  and  external  appearances.  Nevertheless, 
these  correspondences  in  animals  are  transient  and  crude ;  and  man 
is  the  only  being  whose  nude  skin  is  sufficiently  delicate  and  trans- 
parent to  indicate  the  minute  changes  in  the  blood's  circulation 
brought  about  by  various  phases  of  pleasure  and  pain. 

To  understand  the  exact  nature  of  these  tints  of  the  complexion, 
which  are  so  greatly  admired — though  different  nations,  as  usual, 
have  different  standards  of  "taste" — it  is  necessary  to  bear  in 
mind  a  few  simple  facts  of  microscopic  anatomy. 

To  put  the  matter  graphically,  it  may  be  said  that  our  body 
wears  two  tight-fitting  physiological  coats,  called  the  epidermis  or 
overskin,  and  the  cutis  or  underskin. 

The  overskin  is  not  simple,  but  consists  of  an  outside  layer  of 
horny  cells,  such  as  are  removed  by  the  razor  on  shaving,  and  an 
inside  mucous  layer,  as  seen  on  the  lips,  which  have  no  horny 
covering. 

The  underskin  contains  nerves,  fat  cells,  hairbulbs,  and  numer- 
ous blood-vessels,  some  as  fine  as  a  hair,  all  embedded  in  a  soft, 
elastic  network  of  connective  tissue. 

The  overskin  has  none  of  these  blood-vessels ;  but  as  it  is  very 
delicate  and  transparent,  it  allows  the  colour  of  the  blood  to  be 


454  ROMANTIC  LOYE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

seen  as  through  a  veil.  In  the  extremely  blond  races  of  the  North 
nothing  but  the  blood  can  be  seen  through  this  veil ;  but  in  the 
coloured  races  the  lower  or  mucous  layer  of  the  overskin  contains 
a  number  of  black,  brown,  or  yellowish  pigment  cells.  The  colours 
of  these  cells  blend  with  that  of  the  blood,  thus  producing,  accord- 
ing to  their  number  and  depth  of  coloration,  the  brunette,  black, 
yellow,  or  red  complexion.  The  palm  of  the  negro's  hand  is 
whiter  than  the  rest  of  his  body,  because  there  the  horny  epidermis 
is  so  thick  that  the  black  pigmentary  matter  cannot  be  seen 
through  it.  And  the  reason  why  every  negro  is  born  to  blush  un- 
seen is  because  the  pigmentary  matter  in  his  skin  is  so  deep  and 
abundant  that  it  neutralises  the  colour  of  the  blood. 

Now,  why  do  the  races  of  various  countries  differ  so  greatly  in 
the  colour  of  their  skin  1  This  is  the  most  vexed  and  difficult 
question  in  anthropology,  on  which  there  are  almost  as  many 
opinions  as  writers. 

The  oldest  and  most  obvious  theory  is  that  the  sun  is  respon- 
sible for  dark  complexions.  Are  not  those  parts  of  our  body 
which  are  constantly  exposed  to  sunlight — the  hands,  face,  and 
neck — darker  than  the  rest  of  the  body  1  and  does  not  this  colour 
become  darker  still  if  we  spend  a  few  weeks  in  the  country  or 
make  a  trip  across  the  Atlantic  1  Do  we  not  find  in  Europe,  as 
we  pass  from  the  sunny  South  to  the  cloudy  North,  that  com- 
plexion, hair,  and  eyes  grow  gradually  lighter  ?  And  not  only  are 
the  Spaniards  and  Italians  darker  than  the  Germans,  but  the  South 
Germans  are  darker  than  the  North  Germans,  and  the  Swedes  and 
Norwegians  lighter  still  than  the  Prussians. 

The  same  holds  true  not  only  of  South  America  as  compared  to 
North  America,  but  of  the  southern  United  States  compared  to 
the  northern.  It  also  holds  true  of  the  East,  where,  as  Waitz 
tells  us,  "  The  Chinese  from  Peking  to  Canton  show  every  shade 
from  a  light  to  a  dark-copper  colour,  while  in  the  Arabians,  from 
the  desert  down  to  Yemen,  we  find  every  gradation  from  olive 
colour  to  black."  Moreover,  aristocratic  ladies  in  Japan  and  China 
are  almost  or  quite  white,  whereas  the  labouring  classes,  as  with 
us,  are  of  a  darker  tint. 

These  and  numerous  similar  facts,  taken  in  connection  with  the 
circumstance  that  the  blackest  of  all  races  lives  in  the  hottest  con- 
tinent, and  that  Jews  may  be  found  of  all  colours  according  to  the 
country  they  inhabit,  lead  almost  irresistibly  to  the  conclusion  that 
it  is  the  sun  who  paints  the  complexion  dark. 

Nevertheless  there  are  numerous  and  striking  exceptions  to  the 
rule  that  the  wanner  the  climate  the  darker  the  complexion.  To 


THE  COMPLEXION  451 

obviate  this  difficulty,  Heusinger  in  1829,  Jarrold  in  1838,  and 
others  after  them,  have  endeavoured  to  show  that  the  moisture  and 
altitude,  as  well  as  the  direct  action  of  the  sun,  had  to  be  taken 
into  consideration.  But  since  "D'Orbigny  in  South  America,  and 
Livingstone  in  Africa,  arrived  at  diametrically  opposite  conclusions 
with  respect  to  dampness  and  dryness,"  Darwin  excogitated  the 
theory  (which,  he  subsequently  found,  had  already  been  advanced 
in  1813  by  Dr.  Wells),  that  inasmuch  as  "the  colour  of  the  skin 
and  hair  is  sometimes  correlated  in  a  surprising  manner  with  a 
complete  immunity  from  the  action  of  certain  vegetable  poisons, 
and  from  the  attacks  of  parasites  .  .  .  negroes  and  other  dark 
races  might  have  acquired  their  dark  tints  by  the  darker  individuals 
escaping  from  the  deadly  influence  of  the  miasma  of  their  native 
countries,  during  a  long  series  of  generations." 

The  testimony  on  this  point  being,  however,  conflicting  and  un- 
satisfactory, Darwin  gave  up  this  notion  too,  and  fell  back  on  the 
theory  that  differences  in  complexion  are  due  to  differences  in  taste, 
and  were  created  through  the  agency  of  Sexual  Selection.  "  We 
know,"  he  says,  "from  the  many  facts  already  given  that  the 
colour  of  the  skin  is  regarded  by  the  men  of  all  races  as  a  highly 
important  element  in  their  beauty ;  so  that  it  is  a  character  which 
would  be  likely  to  have  been  modified  through  selection,  as  has 
occurred  in  innumerable  instances  with  the  lower  animals.  It 
seems  at  first  sight  a  monstrous  supposition  that  the  jet-blackness 
of  the  negro  should  have  been  gained  through  sexual  selection; 
but  this  view  is  supported  by  various  analogies,  and  we  know  that 
negroes  admire  their  own  colour." 

Doubtless  there  is  some  truth  in  Darwin's  view,  but  it  does  not 
cover  the  whole  ground.  Natural  as  well  as  Sexual  Selection  has 
been  instrumental  in  producing  the  diverse  colours  of  various  races. 
Hitherto  the  trouble  has  been  that  no  one  could  understand  how  a 
black  skin  could  be  useful  to  an  African  negro.  It  ought  to  make 
him  feel  uncomfortably  hot — for  is  it  not  well  known  that  black 
absorbs  heat  more  than  any  other  colour?  and  do  we  not  feel 
warmer  in  summer  if  we  wear  black  than  if  we  wear  white 
clothes  ? 

No  doubt  whatever.  But  it  so  happens  that  the  skin  is  not 
made  of  dead  wool  or  felt.  It  contains,  among  various  other 
ingenious  arrangements,  a  vast  number  of  minute  holes  or  pores, 
through  which,  when  we  are  very  warm,  the  perspiration  leaks, 
and,  in  changing  into  vapour,  absorbs  the  body's  heat  and  leaves  it 
cool,  or  even  cold.  Now,  in  a  negro's  skin  these  pores  are  both 
larger  and  more  numerous  than  in  ours,  which  partly  accounts  for 


456  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

his  indifference  to  heat,  and  the  fact  that  his  temperature  is  lower 
than  ours.  Yet  it  does  not  solve  the  problem  in  hand ;  for  there 
is  no  visible  reason  why  Natural  Selection  should  not  succeed  in 
enlarging  the  number  and  size  of  the  pores  in  a  white  skin  as  easily 
as  in  a  black  one. 

A  year  or  two  ago  Surgeon-Major  Alcock  sent  a  communication 
to  Nature  in  which,  as  I  believe,  he  for  the  first  time  suggested 
the  true  reason  why  tropical  man  is  black,  and  why  his  blackness 
is  useful  to  him.  He  pointed  out  that  since  the  pigment-cells  in 
the  negro's  skin  are  placed  in  front  of  the  nerve  terminations,  they 
serve  to  lessen  the  intensity  of  the  nerve  vibrations  that  would  be 
caused  in  a  naked  human  body  by  exposure  to  a  tropical  sun  ;  so 
that  the  pigment  plays  the  same  part  as  a  piece  of  smoked  glass 
held  between  the  sun  and  the  eyes. 

This  ingenious  theory  at  once  explains  some  curious  and  appa- 
rently anomalous  observations  communicated  to  Nature  by  Mr. 
Ralph  Abercrombie  from  Darjeeling.  They  are  that  "  In  Morocco, 
and  all  along  the  north  of  Africa,  the  inhabitants  blacken  them- 
selves round  the  eyes  to  avert  ophthalmia  from  the  glare  off  hot 
sand ;"  that  "  In  Fiji  the  natives,  who  are  in  the  habit  of  painting 
their  faces  with  red  and  white  stripes  as  an  ornament,  invariably 
blacken  them  when  they  go  out  fishing  on  the  reef  in  the  full  glare 
of  the  sun ; "  and  that  "  In  the  Sikkim  hills  the  natives  blacken 
themselves  round  the  eyes  with  charcoal  to  palliate  the  glare  of  a 
tropical  sun  on  newly-fallen  snow." 

How,  on  the  other  hand,  are  we  to  account  for  the  white  com- 
plexion of  northern  races'?  It  is  well  known  that  there  is  a 
tendency  among  arctic  animals  to  become  white.  This,  in  many 
cases,  can  be  accounted  for  by  the  advantage  white  beasts  of  prey, 
as  well  as  their  victims,  thus  gain  in  escaping  detection.  But  it  is 
probable  that  another  agency  comes  into  play,  first  suggested  by 
Craven  in  1846,  and  thus  summarised  by  a  writer  in  Nature,  2d 
April  1885  :  "  It  is  well  known  that  white,  as  the  worst  absorber, 
is  also  the  worst  radiator  of  all  forms  of  radiant  energy,  so  that 
warm-blooded  creatures  thus  clad  would  be  better  enabled  to  with- 
stand the  severity  of  an  arctic  climate — the  loss  of  heat  by  radiation 
might,  in  fact,  be  expected  to  be  less  rapid  than  if  the  hairs  or 
feathers  were  of  a  darker  colour." 

This  argument,  which  may  be  applied  to  man  as  well  as  to 
animals,  is  greatly  strengthened  by  a  circumstance  which  at  first 
appears  to  oppose  it — the  fact,  namely,  that  insects  in  northern 
regions,  instead  of  being  light-coloured,  show  a  tendency  toward 
blackness.  But  this  apparent  anomaly  is  easily  explained.  Insects, 


THE  COMPLEXION  457 

being  cold-blooded,  cannot  lose  any  bodily  heat  through  radiation ; 
whereas  a  black  surface,  by  absorbing  as  much  solar  heat  as  possible 
while  it  lasts,  adds  to  their  comfort  and  vitality. 

The  question  now  arises,  Which  was  the  original  colour  of  the 
human  race,  white  or  black  ]  This  question,  too,  we  are  enabled 
to  answer  with  the  aid  of  a  principle  of  evolution  which,  so  far,  has 
stood  every  test, — the  principle  that  the  child's  development  is  an 
epitome  of  the  evolution  of  his  race.  Before  birth  there  is  no 
colouring  matter  at  all  in  the  skin  of  a  negro  child.  "  In  a  new- 
born child  the  colour  is  light  gray,  and  in  the  northern  parts  of 
the  negro  countries  the  completely  dark  colour  is  not  attained  till 
towards  the  third  year,"  says  Waitz  •  and  again,  in  speaking  of 
Tahiti :  "  The  children  are  here  (as  everywhere  in  Polynesia)  white 
at  birth,  and  only  gradually  assume  their  darker  colour  under  the 
influence  of  sunlight;  covered  portions  of  their  bodies  remain 
lighter,  and  since  women  wear  more  clothes  than  men,  and  dwell 
more  in  the  shade,  they  too  are  often  of  so  light  a  colour  that  they 
have  red  cheeks  and  blush  visibly." 

So  we  are  entitled  to  infer  that  primitive  man  was  originally 
white,  or  whitish.  As  he  moved  south,  Natural  Selection  made 
him  darker  and  darker  by  continually  favouring  the  survival  of 
those  individuals  whose  colour — owing  to  the  spontaneous  variation 
found  throughout  Nature  —  was  of  a  dark  shade,  and  therefore 
better  able  to  dull  the  ardour  of  the  sun's  rays.  In  the  north,  on 
the  contrary,  a  light  complexion  was  favoured  for  its  quality  of 
retaining  the  body's  heat.  The  yellow  and  red  varieties  need  not 
be  specially  considered,  for  it  has  been  shown  that  the  different 
tints  of  the  iris  are  merely  due  to  the  greater  or  less  quantity  of 
the  same  pigmentary  matter ;  and  as  the  colouring  matter  of  the 
complexion  and  the  hair  is  similar  to  that  of  the  eye,  it  is  probable 
that  the  same  holds  true  of  different  hues  of  the  skin ;  so  that 
yellowish,  brown,  and  reddish  tints  may  be  looked  upon  as  mere 
intermediate  stages  between  white  and  black.  A  trace  of  pigment, 
indeed,  is  found  even  in  our  skins ;  and  I  believe  that  the  reason 
why  we  become  brown  on  exposure  to  the  sun  is  that  the  skin, 
when  thus  exposed  and  irritated,  secretes  a  larger  amount  of  this 
colouring  matter,  to  serve,  like  a  dimly-smoked  glass,  as  a  protection 
against  scorching  rays. 

From  all  these  considerations  we  may  safely  infer  that  the  par- 
ticular hue  of  man's  skin  in  each  climate  is  useful  to  him,  and  not 
merely  an  ornamental  product  of  "  taste,"  as  Darwin  believed. 
Yet  to  some  extent  Sexual  Selection,  doubtless,  does  come  into  play 
in  moat  cases.  At  a  low  stage  of  culture  each  race  likes  its  special 


458  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

characteristics  in  an  exaggerated  form, — a  trait  which  would  lead 
the  more  vigorous  men  to  persistently  select  the  darkest  girls  as 
wives,  and  thus  cause  their  gradual  predominance  over  the  others  : 
while  the  men,  too,  would,  of  course,  inherit  a  darker  tint  from 
their  mothers.  But  a  still  more  important  consideration  is  this, 
that,  as  Dr.  Topinard  points  out,  "  Dark  colour  in  the  negro  is  a 
sign  of  health" — naturally,  since  the  darker  the  dermal  pigment, 
the  better  are  the  nerves  of  temperature  protected  against  the  ener- 
vating solar  rays.  Concerning  the  Polynesians,  too,  Ellis  (cited 
by  Waitz)  "  notes  expressly  that  a  dark  colour  was  more  admired 
and  desired  because  it  was  looked  upon  as  a  sign  of  vigour." 

These  facts  yield  us  a  most  profound  insight  into  the  methods 
of  amorous  selection.  The  erotic  instinct,  whose  duty  is  the  pre- 
servation of  the  species,  is  above  all  things  attracted  by  Health, 
because  without  Health  the  species  must  languish  and  die  out.  In 
a  climate  where — under  the  circumstances  in  which  negroes  live — 
a  light  complexion  is  incompatible  with  Health,  it  is  bound  to  be 
eliminated. 

Fortunately,  the  negro's  taste  is  not  sufficiently  refined  to  make 
him  feel  the  aesthetic  inferiority  of  the  ebony  complexion  imposed 
on  him  by  his  climate.  Wherein  this  aesthetic  inferiority  consists 
is  graphically  pointed  out  in  these  words  of  Figuier :  "The  colour 
of  the  skin  takes  away  all  charm  from  the  negro's  countenance. 
What  renders  the  European's  face  pleasing  is  that  each  of  its 
features  exhibits  a  particular  shade.  The  cheeks,  forehead,  nose, 
and  chin  of  the  white  have  each  a  different  tinge.  On  an  African 
visage,  on  the  contrary,  all  is  black,  even  the  eyebrows,  as  inky  as 
the  rest,  are  merged  in  the  general  colour ;  scarcely  another  shade 
is  perceptible,  except  at  the  line  where  the  lips  join  each  other." 

Nor  is  this  all.  Not  only  do  we  look  in  vain,  in  the  monoto- 
nous blackness  of  the  negro's  face,  for  those  varied  tints  which 
adorn  a  white  maiden's  face,  borrowing  one  another's  charms  by 
insensible  gradations,  but  also  for  those  subtle  emotional  changes 
which,  even  if  they  existed  in  the  negro's  mind,  could  not  paint 
themselves  so  delicately  on  his  opaque  countenance,  betraying  every 
acceleration  or  retardation  in  the  heart's  beats,  indicating  every 
nuance  of  hope  and  despair,  of  pleasure  or  anguish. 

In  our  own  latitude,  luckily,  Natural  Selection  favours,  in  the 
manner  indicated,  the  survival  of  the  translucent  white  complexion. 
And  what  Natural  Selection  leaves  undone,  Sexual  Selection  com- 
pletes. Romantic  Love  is  the  great  awakener  of  the  sense  of 
Beauty,  and  in  proportion  as  Love  is  developed  and  unimpeded  in 
its  action,  does  the  complexion  become  more  beautiful  and  more 


THE  COMPLEXION  459 

appreciated.  Savages,  blind  to  the  delicate  tints  of  a  transparent 
skin,  daub  themselves  all  over  with  mixtures  of  grease  and  paint. 
The  women  of  ancient  Greece  had  taste  enough  to  feel  the  ugliness 
of  the  pallor  caused  by  being  constantly  chaperoned  and  locked  up, 
but  not  enough  to  know  that  no  artificial  paint  can  ever  replace 
the  natural  colour  of  health.  Hence,  as  Becker  tells  us,  "painting 
was  almost  universal  among  Grecian  women."  Perhaps  they  did 
not  use  any  rouge  at  home,  but  it  "  was  resumed  when  they  were 
going  out,  or  wished  to  be  specially  attractive."  The  men,  appa- 
rently, had  better  taste,  for  we  read  that  "  Ischomachos  counselled 
his  young  wife  to  take  exercise,  that  she  might  do  without  rouge, 
which  she  was  accustomed  constantly  to  use." 

Coming  to  more  recent  times,  we  find  men  still  protesting  in 
vain  against  the  feminine  fashion  of  bedaubing  the  face  with  vulgar 
paint.  More  than  two  centuries  ago  La  Bruyere  informed  his 
countrywomen  pointedly  that  "  If  it  is  the  men  they  desire  to  please, 
if  it  is  for  them  that  they  paint  and  stain  themselves,  I  have  col- 
lected their  opinions,  and  I  assure  them,  in  the  name  of  all  or  most 
men,  that  the  white  and  red  paint  renders  them  frightful  and 
disgusting;  that  the  red  alone  makes  them  appear  old  and  artifi- 
cial ;  that  men  hate  as  much  to  see  them  with  cherry  in  their  faces, 
as  with  false  teeth  in  their  mouth  and  lumps  of  wax  in  the  jaws." 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  women  who  paint  their  faces  put 
themselves  on  a  level  with  savages ;  for  they  show  thereby  that 
they  prefer  hideous  opaque  daubs  to  the  charm  of  translucent  facial 
tints.  Masculine  protestation,  combined  with  masculine  amorous 
preference  for  pure  complexions,  has  at  last  succeeded  in  banishing 
paint  from  the  boudoir  of  the  most  refined  ladies ;  and  this,  com- 
bined with  compulsory  vaccination  against  smallpox,  accounts  for 
the  increasing  number  of  good  complexions  in  the  world. 

But,  the  important  question  now  confronts  us,  Is  there  no  limit 
to  the  evolution  of  whiteness  of  complexion  ?  Will  Sexual  Selec- 
tion continue  to  favour  the  lighter  shades  until  the  hyperbolic 
"milk  and  blood"  complexion  will  have  been  universally  realised? 

An  emphatic  No  "  is  the  answer.  An  exaggerated  white  is  as 
objectionable  as  black, — more  so>  in  fact,  because,  whereas  the 
deepest  black  indicates  good  health,  Extreme  whiteness  suggests 
the  pallor  of  ill-health,  and  will  therefore  always  displease  Cupid, 
the  supreme  judge  of  Personal  Beauty.  Moreover,  iu  a  very  white 
face  the  red  cheek  suggests  the  confusing  blush  or  the  hectic  flush 
rather  than  the  subtle  tints  of  health  and  normal  emotion.  And 
again,  the  Scandinavian  rose-and-lily  complexion  is  inferior  to  the 
delicate  and  sKghtly*v«?iipd  tint  of  the  Spnni-h  brunette, 


4«0  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

the  latter  suggests  the  mellowing  action  of  the  sun's  rays,  which 
promises  more  permanence  of  beauty.  Hence  it  is  that  in  the 
marriage  market  a  decided  preference  is  shown  for  the  brunette 
type,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  chapter  on  Blondes  and  Brunettes. 


COSMETIC   HINTS 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  understand  the  extreme  importance 
of  the  complexion  from  an  amorous  point  of  view,  and  to  see  why 
the  care  of  the  complexion  has  almost  monopolised  the  attention 
of  those  desiring  to  improve  their  personal  appearance,  as  shown  by 
the  fact  that  the  word  "  cosmetic,"  in  common  parlance,  refers  to 
the  care  of  the  skin  alone. 

Books  containing  recipes  for  skin  lotions,  ointments,  and 
powders  are  so  numerous,  that  it  is  not  worth  while  to  devote 
much  space  to  the  matter  here.  As  a  rule,  the  best  advice  to 
those  about  to  use  cosmetics  is  Don't.  Every  man  whose  admira- 
tion is  worth  having  will  infinitely  prefer  a  freckled,  or  even  a 
pallid  or  smallpox-marked,  face  to  one  showing  traces  of  powder  or 
greasy  ointments,  or  lifeless,  cadaverous  enamel,  opaque  as  ebony 
blackness. 

If  a  woman's  skin  is  so  morbidly  sensitive  as  to  be  injured  by 
ordinary  water  and  good  soap,  it  is  a  sign  of  ill-health  which  calls 
for  residence  in  the  country  and  the  mellowing  rays  of  the  sun. 
Where  this  is  unattainable,  the  water  may  be  medicated  by  the 
addition  of  a  slice  of  lemon,  cucumber,  or  horse-radish,  to  all  of 
which  magic  effects  are  often  attributed.  The  black  spots  on  the 
sides  of  the  nose  may  be  removed  in  a  few  weeks  by  the  daily 
application  (with  friction)  of  lemon  juice.  For  pimples  and  barber's 
itch  a  camphor  and  sulphur  ointment,  which  may  be  obtained  of 
any  chemist,  is  the  simplest  remedy.  For  a  shiny,  polished  com- 
plexion, and  excessive  redness  of  the  nose,  cheeks,  and  knuckles, 
the  following  mixture  is  recommended  by  a  good  authority : — 
Powdered  borax,  one  half  ounce;  pure  glycerine,  one  ounce; 
camphor-water,  one  quart.  Borax,  indeed,  is  as  indispensable  a 
toilet  article  as  soap  or  a  nail-brush.  After  washing  the  face,  ex- 
posure to  the  raw  air  should  always  be  avoided  for  ten  or  fifteen 
minutes. 

"  A  certain  amount  of  friction  applied  to  the  face  daily  will  do 
much,"  says  Dr.  Bulkley,  "to  keep  the  pores  of  the  sebaceous 
glands  open ;  and,  by  stimulating  the  face,  to  prevent  the  forma- 
tion of  the  black  specks  and  red  spots  so  common  in  young  people, 
I  generally  direct  that  the  face  be  rubbed  to  a  degree  short  of 


THE  COMPLEXION  461 

discomfort,  and  that  the  towel  be  not  too  rough."     Slight  friction 
also  helps  to  ward  off  wrinkles. 

Two  or  three  weekly  baths — hot  in  winter,  cold  in  summer — 
are  absolutely  necessary  for  those  who  wish  to  keep  their  skin  in  a 
healthy  condition ;  and  no  elixir  of  youth  and  beauty  could  pro- 
duce such  a  sparkling  eye  and  glow  of  rosy  health  as  a  daily 
morning  sponge  bath,  followed  by  friction — care  being  taken,  in  a 
cold  room,  to  expose  only  one  part  of  the  body  at  a  time.  The 
importance  of  keeping  open  the  pores  of  the  skin  by  bathing  is 
seen  by  the  fact  that  if  a  man  were  painted  with  varnish  he  would 
suffocate  in  a  few  hours ;  for  the  skin  is  a  sort  of  external  lung, 
aiding  its  internal  colleague  in  removing  effete  products,  dissolved 
in  the  perspiration,  from  the  system. 

The  debris  and  oily  matter  brought  to  the  surface  of  the  skin 
and  deposited  there  by  the  perspiration  cannot  be  completely 
removed  without  soap.  Unfortunately,  this  article  has  done  more 
to  ruin  complexions  than  almost  any  other  cause,  except  smallpox 
and  the  superstitious  dread  of  sunshine.  Many  people  have  a 
peculiar  mania  for  economising  in  soap.  If  they  can  buy  a  piece 
of  soap  for  a  farthing,  they  consider  themselves  wonderfully  clever, 
regardless  of  the  fact  that  it  may  not  only  ruin  their  complexion, 
but  produce  a  repulsive  skin  disease  which  it  will  cost  much  gold 
to  cure.  Do  they  ever  realise  that  these  soaps,  which  they  thus 
smear  over  the  most  delicate  parts  of  their  body  every  day,  are  made 
of  putrid  carcasses  of  animals,  rancid  fat,  and  corrosive  alkalies  1 
Has  no  one  ever  told  them  that  if  a  soap  is  both  cheap  and  highly 
perfumed  it  is  certain  to  be  of  vile  composition,  and  injurious  to 
the  skin  ?  After  washing  yourself  wait  a  moment  till  the  soap's 
artificial  odour  has  disappeared,  and  then  smell  your  hands.  That 
vile  rancid  odour  which  remains — if  you  knew  its  source,  you  would 
immediately  run  for  a  Turkish  bath  to  wash  off  the  very  epidermis 
to  which  that  odour  has  adhered. 

What  has  mined  so  many  complexions  is  not  soap  itself,  but 
bad  soap.  A  famous  specialist,  Dr.  Bulkley,  says  that  "  there  is 
oo  intrinsic  reason  why  soap  should  not  be  applied  to  the  face, 
although  there  is  a  very  common  impression  among  the  profession, 
as  well  as  the  laity,  that  it  should  not  be  used  there.  .  .  .  The 
fuct  is,  that  many  cases  of  eruptions  upon  the  face  are  largely  due 
u>  the  fact  that  soap  has  not  been  used  on  that  part ;  and  it  is 
•tlso  true  that,  if  properly  employed,  and  if  the  soap  is  good,  it  is 
•iot  only  harmless,  but  beneficial  to  the  skin  of  the  face,  as  to  every 
>ther  part  of  the  body." 

*'  A  word  may  be  added  in  reference  to  the  so-called  *  medicated 


462  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

soaps/  whose  number  and  variety  are  legion,  each  claiming  virtues 
far  excelling  all  others  previously  produced.  .  .  Now  all  or  most 
of  this  attempt  to  'medicate'  soap  is  a  perfect  farce,  a  delusion, 
and  a  snare  to  entrap  the  unwary  and  uneducated.  .  .  .  Carboli: 
soap  is  useless  and  may  be  dangerous,  because  the  carbolic  acid 
may  possibly  become  the  blind  beneath  which  a  cheap,  poor  soap 
is  used ;  for  in  all  these  advertised  and  patented  nostrums  the 
temptation  is  great  to  employ  inferior  articles  that  the  pecuniary 
gain  may  be  greater.  The  small  amount  of  carbolic  acid  incorpor- 
ated in  the  soap  cannot  act  as  an  efficient  disinfectant." 

FRECKLES   AND   SUNSHINB 

Soap  is  not  the  only  cosmetic  that  has  been  tabooed  in  the  face 
because  of  illogical  reasoning.  There  is  a  much  more  potent 
beautifying  influence — viz.,  the  mellowing  rays  of  the  sun — of 
which  the  face  has  long  been  deprived,  chiefly  on  account  of  an 
unscientific  prejudice  that  the  sun  is  responsible  for  freckles.  In 
his  famous  work  on  skin  diseases  Professor  Hebra  of  Vienna,  the 
greatest  modern  authority  in  his  specialty,  has  completely  dis- 
proved this  almost  universally  accepted  theory.  The  matter  is  of 
such  extreme  importance  to  Health  and  Beauty  that  his  remarks 
must  be  quoted  at  length  : — 

"It  is  a  fact  that  lentigo  (freckles)  neither  appears  in  the 
newly-born  nor  in  children  under  the  age  of  6-8  years,  whether 
they  run  about  the  whole  day  in  the  open  air  and  exposed  to  the 
bronzing  influence  of  the  sun,  or  whether  they  remain  confined  to 
the  darkest  room ;  it  is  therefore  certain  that  neither  light  nor  air 
nor  warmth  produces  such  spots  in  children.  .  .  . 

"  If  we  examine  the  skin  of  an  individual  who  is  said  to  be 
affected  with  the  so-called  freckles  only  in  the  summer,  at  other 
seasons  of  the  year  with  sufficient  closeness  in  a  good  light,  and 
with  the  skin  put  on  the  stretch  by  the  finger,  we  shall  detect  the 
same  spots,  of  the  same  size  but  of  somewhat  lighter  colour  than 
in  summer.  In  further  illustration  of  what  has  just  been  said,  I 
will  mention  that  I  have  repeatedly  had  the  opportunity  of  seeing 
lentigines  on  parts  of  the  body  that,  as  a  rule,  are  never  exposed 
to  the  influence  of  the  light  and  sun.  .  .  . 

"A  priori,  it  is  difficult  to  understand  how  ephelides  can 
originate  from  the  influence  of  sun  and  light  in  the  singular  form 
of  disseminated  spots,  since  these  influences  act  not  only  on  single 
points,  but  uniformly  over  the  whole  surface  of  the  skin  of  the  face, 
hands,  etc.  The  pigmentary  changes  must  appear,  therefore,  in 


THE  COMPLEXION  463 

the  form  of  patches,  not  of  points.  Moreover,  it  is  known  to  every 
one  that,  if  the  skin  of  the  face  be  directly  exposed,  even  for  only 
a  short  time,  to  a  rough  wind  or  to  intense  heat,  a  tolerably  dark 
bronzing  appears,  which  invades  the  affected  parts  uniformly,  and 
not  in  the  form  01  disseminated,  so-called  summer-spots  (freckles). 
It  was,  therefore,  only  faulty  observation  on  the  part  of  our  fore- 
fathers which  induced  them  to  attribute  the  ephelides  to  the 
influence  of  light  and  sun." 

But  the  amount  of  mischief  done  by  this  "  faulty  observation  of 
our  forefathers"  is  incalculable.  To  it  we  owe  the  universal  femi- 
nine horror  of  sunshine,  without  which  it  is  as  impossible  for  their 
complexion  to  have  a  healthy,  love-inspiring  aspect,  as  it  is  for  a 
plant  grown  in  a  cellar  to  have  a  healthy  green  colour.  How 
many  women  are  there  who  preserve  their  youthful  beauty  after 
twenty-five — the  age  when  they  ought  to  be  in  full  bloom  1  They 
owe  this  early  decay  partly  to  their  indolence,  mental  and  physical, 
partly  to  their  habit  of  shutting  out  every  ray  of  sunlight  from 
their  faces  as  if  it  were  a  rank  poison  instead  of  the  source  of  all 
Health  and  Beauty.  If  young  ladies  would  daily  exercise  their 
muscles  in  fresh  air  and  sunshine,  they  would  not  need  veils  to 
make  themselves  look  younger.  Veils  may  be  useful  against  very 
rough  wind,  but  otherwise  they  should  be  avoided,  because  they 
injure  the  eyesight.  Parasols  are  a  necessity  on  very  hot  summer 
afternoons,  but  "  the  rest  of  the  year  the  complexion  needs  all  the 
sun  it  can  get." 

Were  any  further  argument  needed  to  convince  us  that  the  sun 
has  been  falsely  accused  of  creating  freckles,  it  would  be  found  in 
the  fact  that  southern  brunette  races,  though  constantly  exposed 
to  the  sun,  are  much  less  liable  to  them  than  the  yellow  and 
especially  the  red-haired  individuals  of  the  North.  Professor 
Hebra  regards  freckles  as  "a  freak  of  Nature  rather  than  as  a 
veritable  disease,"  and  thinks  they  are  "  analogous  to  the  piebald 
appearances  met  with  in  the  lower  animals."  As  has  just  been 
noted,  they  exist  in  winter  as  well  as  in  summer.  All  that  the 
summer  heat  does  is  to  make  them  visible  by  making  the  skin 
more  transparent.  As  the  heat  itself  causes  them  to  appear  any 
way,  it  is  useless  to  taboo  the  direct  sunlight  as  their  source. 

Inasmuch  as  freckles  appear  chiefly  among  northern  races, 
whose  skin  has  been  excessively  bleached  and  weakened  in  its 
action  by  constant  indoor  life,  it  seems  probable,  notwithstanding 
Dr.  Hebra's  opinion,  that  they  are  the  result  of  an  unhealthy, 
abnormal  action  of  the  pigment-secreting  apparatus  which  exists 
even  in  the  white  skin.  If  this  be  so,  then  proper  care  of  the 


46,'  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

skin  continued  for  several  generations  would  obliterate  them. 
The  reason  why  country  folks  are  more  liable  to  freckles  than 
their  city  cousins  would  then  be  referable,  not  to  the  greater 
amount  of  sunlight  in  the  country,  but  to  the  rarity  of  bath-tubs, 
good  soap,  and  friction-towels.  My  own  observation  leads  me  to 
believe  that  freckles  are  rarer  in  England  than  on  the  continent, 
and  the  English  are  proverbially  enamoured  of  the  bath-tub  and 
open-air  exercise. 

For  those  who,  without  any  fault  of  their  own,  have  inherited 
freckles  from  their  parents,  there  is  this  consoling  reflection  that 
these  blemishes  reside  in  a  very  superficial  layer  of  the  skin,  and 
can  therefore  be  removed.  Several  methods  are  known ;  but  as 
no  one  should  ever  use  them  without  medical  assistance,  they  need 
not  be  described  here  (see  Hebra's  Treatise,  vol.  iii.)  Any  one 
who  wishes  to  temporarily  conceal  skin-blemishes  may  find  this 
citation  from  Hebra  of  use :  "  Perfumers  and  apothecaries  have 
prepared  from  time  immemorial  cosmetics  whose  chief  constituent 
is  talcum  venetum,  or  pulvis  aluminis  plumosi  (Federweiss),  which, 
when  rubbed  in,  in  the  form  of  a  paste,  with  water  and  alcohol, 
or  a  salve  with  lard,  or  quite  dry,  as  a  powder,  gives  to  the  skin 
an  agreeable  white  colour,  and  does  not  injure  it  in  the  least,  even 
if  the  use  of  the  cosmetic  be  continued  throughout  life." 

It  is  probable  that  electricity  will  play  a  grand  rdle  in  future 
as  an  agent  for  removing  superfluous  hairs,  freckles,  moles,  port- 
wine  marks,  etc.  Much  has  already  been  done  in  this  direction, 
and  the  only  danger  is  in  falling  into  the  hands  of  an  unscrupulous 
quack.  In  vol.  iii.  No.  4  of  the  Journal  of  Cutaneous  and 
Venereal  Diseases^  Dr.  Hardaway  has  an  interesting  article  on 
this  subject. 

THE  EYES 

In  one  of  the  Platonic  dialogues  Sokrates  points  out  the  rela- 
tivity of  standards  of  Beauty.  "  Is  not,"  he  asks  in  effect,  "  the 
most  beautiful  ape  ugly  compared  to  a  maiden  1  and  is  not  the 
maiden,  in  turn,  inferior  in  beauty  to  a  goddess  1 " 

Eegarding  most  of  the  human  features  it  may  be  conceded  that 
Sokrates  is  right  in  his  second  question.  To  find  a  human  fore- 
head, nose,  or  mouth  that  could  not  be  improved  in  some  respect, 
is  perhaps  impossible.  But  one  feature  must  be  excepted.  There 
are  human  eyes  which  no  artist  with  a  goddess  for  a  model  could 
make  more  divine.  And  of  these  glorious  orbs  there  are  so  many, 
in  every  country,  that  one  cannot  help  concluding  that  Sehopeu- 


THE  EYES  465 

hauer  made  a  great  mistake  in  placing  the  face,  with  the  eyes,  so 
low  down  in  his  list  of  love-inspiring  human  qualities.  On  the 
contrary,  I  am  convinced  that  no  feminine  charm  so  frequently 
and  so  fatally  fascinates  men  as  lovely  eyes,  and  that  it  is  for  this 
reason  that  Sexual  Selection  has  done  more  to  perfect  the  eyes 
than  any  other  part  of  the  body. 

When  Petruchio  says  of  Katharina  that  "  she  looks  as  clear  &s  . 
morning  roses  newly  washed  with  dew,"  he  compliments  her  com- 
plexion ;  but  when  the  Persian  poet  compares  "  a  violet  sparkling 
with  dew "  to  "  the  blue  eyes  of  a  beautiful  girl  in  tears,"  the 
compliment  is  to  the  violet.  A  woman's  eye  is  the  most  beautiful 
object  in  the  universe ;  and  what  made  it  so  is  man's  Romantic 
Love. 

Putting  poetry  aside,  we  must  now  consider  a  few  scientific 
facts  and  correct  a  few  misconceptions  regarding  the  eye,  its  colour, 
lustre,  form,  and  expression. 

COLOUR 

To  say  of  any  one  that  he  has  gray,  blue,  brown,  or  black  eyes, 
is  vague  and  incorrect  from  a  strictly  scientific  point  of  view, 
inasmuch  as  there  are  no  really  gray  or  black  eyes,  and,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  every  eye,  if  closely  examined,  shows  at  least  five 
or  six  different  colours. 

There  is,  first,  the  tough  sclerotic  coat  or  white  of  the  eye, 
which  covers  the  greater  part  of  the  eyeball,  and  is  not  trans- 
parent, except  in  front  where  the  coloured  iris  (or  rainbow  mem- 
brane) is  seen  through  it.  This  central  transparent  portion  of  the 
sclerotic  coat  is  called  the  cornea,  and  is  slightly  raised  above  the 
general  surface  of  the  eyeball,  like  the  middle  portion  of  some 
watch-glasses. 

The  white  of  the  eye  is  sometimes  slightly  tinged  with  blue 
or  yellow,  and  sometimes  netted  with  inflamed  blood-vessels.  All 
these  deviations  are  aesthetically  inferior  to  the  pure  white  of  the 
healthy  European,  because  suggestive  of  disease,  and  conflicting 
with  the  general  cosmic  standards  of  beauty.  The  bluish  tint  is  a 
sign  of  consumption  or  scrofulous  disorders,  being  caused  by  a 
diminution  of  the  pigmentary  matter  in  the  choroid  coat  which 
lines  the  inside  of  the  sclerotic.  The  yellowish  tint,  in  the 
European,  is  indicative  of  jaundice,  dyspepsia,  or  premature  de- 
generacy of  the  white  of  the  eye.  It  is  normal,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  the  healthy  negro;  but  if  a  negro  should  claim  that, 
inasmuch  as  a  yellowish  sclerotic  is  to  him  not  suggestive  of 


466  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

disease,  he  has  as  much  right  to  consider  it  beautiful  as  we  om 
white  sclerotic,  the  simple  retort  would  be,  that  we  are  guided  in  our 
aesthetic  judgment  by  positive  as  well  as  negative  tests.  Disease 
is  the  negative  test;  the  positive  lies  in  the  fact  that  in  inanimate 
objects,  where  disease  is  altogether  out  of  the  question — as  in 
ivory  ornaments  (which  no  one  associates  with  an  elephant's  tusk) 
— we  also  invariably  prefer  a  pure  snowy  white  to  a  muddy  un- 
certain yellow.  It  is  these  two  tests  in  combination  which  have 
guided  Sexual  Selection  in  its  efforts  to  eliminate  all  but  the  pure 
white  sclerotic, — a  tint  which,  moreover,  throws  into  brighter 
relief  the  enchanting  hues  of  the  "  sunbeamed  "  iris. 

More  objectionable  still  than  a  yellowish  or  bluish  sclerotic  is  a 
bloodshot  eye,  not  only  because  the  inflamed  blood-vessels  which 
swell  and  flood  the  white  surface  of  the  eye  deface  the  marble 
purity  of  the  sclerotic  (in  a  manner  not  in  the  least  analogous  to 
marble  "  veins  "),  but  because  the  red,  watery  blear  eye  generally 
indicates  the  ravages  of  intemperance  or  unrestrained  passions. 
However,  a  bloodshot  eye  may  be  the  result  of  mere  overwork,  or 
reading  in  a  flickering  light,  or  lack  of  sleep;  hence  it  is  not 
always  safe  to  allow  the  disagreeable  aesthetic  impression  given  by 
inflamed  eyes  to  prognosticate  moral  obliquity.  But,  after  all, 
the  intimate  connection  between  aesthetic  and  moral  judgments  is 
in  this  case  based  on  a  correct,  subtle  instinct ;  for  is  not  a  man 
who  ruins  the  health  and  beauty  of  his  eyes  by  intemperance  in 
drink  or  night-work  sinning  against  himself?  If  attempts  at 
suicide  are  punished  by  law,  why  should  not  minor  offences  against 
one's  Health  at  least  be  looked  upon  with  moral  disapproval  ?  If 
this  sentiment  could  be  made  universal,  there  would  be  fifty  per 
cent  more  Beauty  in  the  world  after  a  single  generation. 

In  the  centre  of  the  white  sclerotic  is  the  membrane  which 
gives  the  eyes  their  characteristic  variations  of  colour, — the  iris  or 
rainbow  curtain.  If  we  look  at  an  eye  from  a  distance  of  a  few 
paces,  it  seems  to  have  some  one  definite  colour,  as  brown  or  blue. 
But  on  closer  examination  we  see  that  there  are  always  several 
hues  in  each  iris.  The  colour  of  the  iris  is  due  to  the  presence  of 
small  pigment  granules  in  its  interior  layer.  These  granules  are 
always  brown,  in  blue  and  gray  as  well  as  in  brown  eyes ;  and 
the  greater  their  number  and  thickness,  the  darker  is  the  colour 
of  the  iris.  Blue  eyes  are  caused  by  the  presence,  in  front  of  the 
pigment-layer,  of  a  thin,  almost  colourless  membrane,  which 
absorbs  all  the  rays  of  light  except  the  blue,  which  it  reflects,  and 
thus  causes  the  translucent  iris  to  appear  of  that  colour. 

The  Instructions  de  la    Socie'td    d'Anthropologie,   says   Dr 


THE  EYES  487 

Topinard,  "recognise  four  shades  of  colour, — brown,  green,  blue, 
and  gray;  each  having  five  tones — the  very  dark,  the  dark,  the 
intermediate,  the  light,  and  the  very  light  The  expression 
"brown"  does  not  mean  pure  brown;  it  is  rather  a  reddish,  a 
yellowish,  or  a  greenish  brown,  corresponding  with  the  chestnut  or 
auburn  colour,  the  hazel  and  the  sandy,  made  use  of  by  the 
English.  The  gray,  too,  is  not  pure ;  it  is,  strictly  speaking,  a 
violet  more  or  less  mixed  with  black  and  white." 

"  The  negro,  in  spite  of  his  name,  is  not  black  but  deep  brown," 
as  Mr.  Tylor  remarks  ;  and  what  is  true  of  his  complexion  is  also 
true  of  his  eyes ;  "  what  are  popularly  called  black  eyes  are  far 
from  having  the  iris  really  black  like  the  pupil ;  eyes  described  as 
black  are  commonly  of  the  deepest  shades  of  brown  or  violet." 

The  pupil,  however,  is  always  jetblack,  not  only  in  negroes,  but 
in  all  races.  For  the  pupil  is  simply  a  round  opening  in  the 
centre  of  the  iris  which  allows  us  to  see  clear  through  the  lens 
and  watery  substance  of  the  eyeball  to  the  black  pigment  which 
lines  its  inside  surface.  The  iris,  in  truth,  is  nothing  but  a 
muscular  curtain  for  regulating  the  size  of  the  pupil,  and  thus 
determining  how  much  light  shall  be  admitted  into  the  interior  of 
the  eye.  When  the  light  is  bright  and  glaring,  a  little  of  it 
suffices  for  vision,  hence  the  iris  relaxes  its  fibres  and  the  pupil 
becomes  smaller;  whereas,  in  twilight  and  moonlight,  the  eye 
needs  all  the  light  it  can  catch,  so  the  muscles  of  the  iris-curtain 
contract  and  enlarge  the  pupil-window.  This  mechanism  of  the 
iris  in  diminishing  or  enlarging  the  pupil  can  be  neatly  observed 
by  looking  into  a  mirror  placed  on  one  side  of  a  window.  If  the 
hand  is  put  up  in  such  a  way  as  to  screen  the  eye  from  the  light, 
the  pupil  will  be  seen  to  enlarge ;  and  if  the  hand  is  then  suddenly 
taken  away,  it  will  immediately  return  to  its  smaller  size.  For 
the  muscles  of  the  iris  have  the  power,  denied  to  other  unstriped 
or  involuntary  muscles,  of  acting  quite  rapidly. 

Thus  we  find  in  the  eyeball  three  distinct  zones  of  colour — the 
white  of  the  eye,  sometimes  slightly  tinted  blue,  yellow,  or  red ; 
the  iris,  which  has  various  shades  of  brown,  green,  blue,  and  gray, 
commonly  two  or  three  in  each  eye ;  and  the  central  black  pupil. 
Add  to  this  the  flesh-colour  of  the  eyelid  and  surrounding  parts, 
and  the  light  or  dark  lashes  and  eyebrows,  and  we  see  that  the 
eye  in  itself  is  a  perfect  colour-symphony. 

Can  we  account  for  the  existence  of  all  these  colours  ?  The 
easiest  thing  in  the  world,  with  the  aid  of  the  principles  of  Natural 
and  Sexual  Selection.  There  are  reasons  for  believing  that  the 
sense  of  sight  is  merely  a  higher  development  from  the  sense  of 


468  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

temperature,  adapted  to  vibrations  so  rapid  that  the  nerves  of 
temperature  can  no  longer  distinguish  them.  In  its  simplest 
form,  among  the  lowest  animals,  the  sense  of  sight  is  represented 
by  a  mere  pigment  spot.  And  in  the  highest  form  of  sight,  after 
the  development  of  the  various  parts  of  our  complicated  eye,  we 
still  find  this  pigment  as  one  of  the  most  essential  conditions  of 
vision.  Its  function,  however,  is  not  the  same  as  that  of  the  pig- 
ment in  the  human  skin.  There  it  is  interposed  between  the  sun 
and  the  underskin,  in  order  to  protect  the  nerves  of  temperature. 
The  optic  nerve  needs  no  such  protection ;  for  the  heat-rays  of  the 
sun  cannot  but  be  cooled  on  passing  through  the  membranes,  the 
lens,  and  the  watery  substance  in  the  eye,  before  reaching  the 
optic  .nerve,  spread  out  on  the  retina.  Consequently  the  eye- 
pigment,  instead  of  being  placed  in  front  of  the  nerves,  is  put 
behind  them ;  and  their  function  is  to  absorb  any  excess  of  light 
that  enters  the  eye.  Were  the  membrane  which  contains  this 
pigment  whitish,  all  the  light  would  be  reflected  back,  and  create 
such  a  glare  and  confusion  that  no  object  could  be  seen  distinctly. 

This  view  regarding  the  function  of  the  pigment  is  strikingly 
supported  by  the  anomalous  case  of  Albinos.  "The  pink  of  their 
eyes  (as  of  white  rabbits)  is  caused  by  the  absence  of  the  black 
pigment,"  says  Mr.  Tylor,  "  so  that  light  passing  out  through  the 
iris  and  pupil  is  tinged  red  from  the  blood-vessels  at  the  back ; 
thus  their  eyes  may  be  seen  to  blush  with  the  rest  of  the  face." 

Bearing  these  facts  in  mind,  it  is  obvious  why  it  is  an  advan- 
tage in  a  sunny  country  to  have  as  much  pigmentary  matter  as 
possible  in  the  eye,  and  why,  therefore,  Natural  Selection  makes 
the  eyes  blacker  the  nearer  we  approach  the  tropics.  And,  as 
with  the  complexion,  so  here,  it  is  fortunate  for  the  negro  that  he 
has  not  sufficient  taste  to  feel  the  aesthetic  inferiority  of  the 
monotonous  black  thus  imposed  on  him  by  Natural  Selection. 
"  The  ins  is  so  dark,"  says  Figuier,  "  as  almost  to  be  confounded 
with  the  black  of  the  pupil.  In  the  European,  the  colour  of  the 
iris  is  so  strongly  marked  as  to  render  at  once  perceptible  whether 
the  person  has  black,  blue,  or  gray  eyes.  There  is  nothing  similar 
in  the  case  of  the  negro,  where  all  parts  of  the  eye  are  blended  in 
the  same  hue.  Add  to  this  that  the  white  of  the  eye  is  always 
suffused  with  yellow  in  the  Negro,  and  you  will  understand  how 
this  organ,  which  contributes  so  powerfully  to  give  life  to  the 
countenance  of  the  White,  is  invariably  dull  and  expressionless  in 
the  Black  Race." 

To  the  Esquimaux,  living  in  the  constant  glare  of  ice  and 
gnowfields,  a  protective  pigment  is  quite  as  necessary  as  to  an 


THE  EYES  469 

African  savage ;  hence  their  eyes  are  equally  black.  But  among 
other  northern  races,  who  are  less  constantly  exposed  to  the 
blinding  rays  of  the  sun,  it  suffices  to  have  coal-black  pigment  in 
the  back  part  of  the  eye,  as  seen  through  the  pupil,  while  the  iris 
need  not  be  so  absolutely  opaque.  This  leaves  room  for  the 
action  of  Sexual  Selection  in  giving  the  preference  to  eyes  less 
monotonously  black.  Our  aesthetic  sense  craves  variety  and  con- 
trasts in  colour ;  and  as  the  sense  of  Beauty  originally  stood  in 
the  service  of  Love  almost  exclusively,  it  is  to  Cupid's  selective 
action  that  we  doubtless  owe  the  diverse  hues  of  the  modern  iris. 

To  what  kind  of  an  iris  does  modern  Love  or  aesthetic  selection 
give  the  preference?  Doubtless  to  that  which  has  the  deepest 
and  most  unmistakable  colour — to  dark  brown,  or  deep  blue,  or 
violet.  One  reason  why  we  care  less  for  the  lighter,  faded  tints  of 
the  iris  is  because  they  present  a  less  vivid  contrast  to  the  white 
of  the  eye;  and  another  reason,  as  Dr.  Hugo  Magnus  suggests, 
lies  in  the  disagreeable  impression  produced  in  us  by  the  difficulty 
of  making  out  the  exact  character  of  the  various  indistinct  shades 
of  gray,  yellow,  green,  or  blue. 

The  consideration  of  the  question  whether  amorous  selection 
shows  any  further  preference  for  one  of  its  two  favourite  colours — 
dark  brown  and  deep  blue — must  be  deferred  to  the  chapter  on 
Blondes  and  Brunettes. 

LUSTRE 

But  Cupid  is  not  guided  by  colour  alone  in  his  choice.  How- 
ever beautiful  the  colour  of  an  eye,  it  loses  half  its  charm  if  it 
lacks  lustre.  A  bright,  sparkling  eye  is  the  most  infallible  index 
of  youthful  vigour  and  health,  whereas  the  lack-lustre  eyes  of  ill- 
health  can  never  serve  as  windows  from  which  Cupid  shoots  his 
arrows.  No  wonder  that  the  poets  have  searched  all  nature  for 
analogies  to  the  lustre  of  a  maiden's  eye,  comparing  it  to  sun  and 
stars,  to  diamonds,  crystalline  lakes,  the  light  of  glow-worms, 
glistening  dewdrops,  etc. 

What  is  the  source  of  this  light  which  shines  from  the  eye 
and  intoxicates  the  lover's  senses  ?  Several  answers  to  this 
question  have  been  suggested.  Twenty-five  hundred  years  ago 
Empedokles  taught  that  "there  is  in  the  eye  a  fine  network 
which  holds  back  the  watery  substance  swimming  about  in  it,  but 
the  fiery  particles  penetrate  through  it  like  the  rays  of  light 
through  a  lantern"  (Ueberweg).  And  a  notion  similar  to  this, 
that  there  is  a  kind  of  magnetic  or  nervous  emanation  which 
beams  from  the  eye  and  is  a  direct  efflux  of  the  soul,  was  enter- 


470  KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

tained  in  recent  times  by  Lavater  and  Cams.  It  was  apparently 
supported  by  the  peculiar  light  which  may  be  seen  occasionally  in 
the  eyes  of  cats,  dogs,  and  horses  in  the  twilight ;  but  this  has 
been  proved  to  be  a  purely  physical  phenomenon  of  reflection,  due 
to  an  anatomical  peculiarity  in  the  eyes  of  these  animals. 

Some  writers  have  attempted  to  account  for  the  lustrous  fire  of 
the  eye  by  attributing  it  to  the  increased  tension  of  the  eyeball 
brought  about  through  certain  joyous  and  exciting  emotions.  Dr. 
Hugo  Magnus,  however,  denies  that  these  emotions  ever  increase 
the  tension  of  the  eyeball :  u  We  know  from  numerous  exceedingly 
minute  measurements  that  there  is  no  such  thing  whatever  as  a 
rapid  change  of  tension  in  the  eye,  as  long  as  it  is  in  a  healthy 
condition."  In  some  diseases,  especially  in  cataract  or  glaucoma, 
such  an  increased  tension  does  occur,  indeed,  but  it  does  not  in 
the  least  impart  to  the  eye  the  sparkle  of  joyous  excitement. 
Hence  Professor  Magnus  concludes  that  "  the  mimic  significance 
of  the  eye  cannot  be  conditioned  by  changes  in  the  form  of  the 
eyeball,  through  tension  or  pressure  on  it." 

His  own  theory  (as  developed  in  his  two  interesting  pamphlets, 
Die  Sprache  der  Augen  and  Das  Auge  in  seinen  aesihetischen  und 
culturgeschichtlichen  Beziehungen)  is  that  the  greater  or  less 
brilliancy  of  the  eyes  depends  entirely  on  the  movements  of 
the  eyelids.  Instead  of  calling  the  eye  the  window  of  the  soul, 
it  is  more  correct  to  say  that  the  cornea  is  a  mirror  which, 
like  any  other  mirror,  reflects  the  light  that  falls  on  it.  The 
higher  the  eyelids  are  raised  the  larger  becomes  the  mirror,  and 
the  more  light  is  therefore  reflected.  Now  it  is  well  known 
that  exciting  emotions  like  joy,  enthusiasm,  anger,  and  pride  have 
a  tendency  to  raise  the  eyelids,  while  the  sad  and  depressing 
emotions  cause  them  to  sink  and  partially  cover  the  eyeball ; 
hence  joy  makes  the  eyes  sparkling,  while  grief  renders  them  dull 
and  lustreless. 

The  old  poetic  and  popular  notion  that  the  lustre  of  the  eye  is 
a  direct  emanation  of  the  human  soul  must  therefore  be  abandoned. 
The  sparkling  eye  is  a  mere  physical  consequence  of  the  involun- 
tary raising  of  the  eyelids  brought  about  through  exhilarating  or 
exciting  emotions. 

This  theory  of  Dr.  Magnus  doubtless  comes  nearer  the  truth 
than  the  others  referred  to ;  and  the  fact  that  snakes'  eyes,  though 
small,  are  proverbially  glistening,  apparently  because  they  are 
lidless,  may  be  used  as  an  additional  argument  in  his  favour, 
which  he  overlooked.  Yet  his  view  does  not  cover  the  whole 
ground ;  for  it  does  not  explain  why,  after  weeping,  or  when  we 


THE  EYES  471 

are  weary  or  ill,  we  may  open  our  eyes  as  widely  as  we  please 
without  making  them  appear  lustrous. 

This  difficulty  suggested  to  me  the  theory  that,  though 
partly  dependent  on  the  movements  of  the  eyelids,  the  lustre 
of  the  eyes  is  due  originally  to  the  tension  and  moisture  of  the 
coryunctwa. 

The  conjunctiva,  though  consisting  of  6-8  layers  of  cells,  is  an 
extremely  thin  and  highly  sensitive,  transparent  membrane,  which 
lines  the  surface  of  the  eyeball  as  well  as  the  inside  of  the  eye- 
lids. In  this  membrane  is  located  the  pain  which  we  feel  if  dust, 
etc.,  flies  into  our  eyes.  In  order  to  wash  out  any  particles  that 
may  get  into  the  eye,  and  to  prevent  the  lid  from  sticking  to 
the  eyeball,  the  lachrymal  glands  constantly  secrete  the  water, 
which,  during  an  emotional  shower,  consolidates  into  tear-drops. 

Now,  just  as  "the  rose  is  sweetest  washed  with  morning 
dew,"  so  the  eye  is  brightest  and  most  fascinating  which  glistens 
in  an  ever  fresh  supply  of  lachrymal  fluid.  After  weeping,  this 
supply  is  temporarily  exhausted,  hence  not  only  are  the  eyes 
"sticky"  and  the  lids  difficult  to  raise,  but  even  if  they  are 
raised  there  is  no  lustre ;  you  look  in  vain  for  "  Cupid's  bonfires 
burning  in  the  eye."  But  when  we  wake  up  from  refreshing 
sleep  in  the  morning,  or  when  we  take  a  walk  in  the  bracing 
country  air,  the  eye  sparkles  its  best  and  "  emulates  the  diamond," 
because  at  such  a  time  all  the  vital  energies,  including  of  course 
those  of  the  lachrymal  glands,  are  incited  to  fresh  activity,  which 
they  lose  again  after  prolonged  use  of  the  eye,  thus  making  it 
appear  duller  in  the  evening. 

Thus  we  can  readily  account  for  those  lights  in  the  eye  "  that 
do  mislead  the  morn."  Yet  it  is  probable  that  (although  in  a  less 
degree  than  dewy  moisture)  the  tension  and  translucency  of  the 
conjunctiva  are  also  concerned  in  the  production  of  a  liquid, 
lustrous  expression.  Though  the  eyeball  itself  may  not  undergo 
any  changes  in  tension,  the  conjunctiva  doubtless  does.  The 
eyeball  rests  on  a  bed  of  fatty  tissue  which  shrinks  after  death, 
owing  to  the  emptying  of  the  blood-vessels  and  the  consolida- 
tion of  the  fat,  which  makes  a  corpse,  appear  "hollow-eyed." 
The  same  effect,  to  a  slighter  degree,  is  caused  by  disease  and  ex- 
cessive fatigue,  making  the  eyes  sink  into  their  sockets.  This 
sinking  must  diminish  the  tension  of  the  conjunctiva,  both  under 
the  eyelids  and  on  the  surface  of  the  eyeball ;  and  in  shrinking  it 
becomes  less  transparent  and  glistening. 

The  following  observations  of  Professor  Kollraann  indirectly 
support  my  theory  that  the  conjunctiva  is  the  source  of  the  eye's 


472  itOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

lustre  :  "  After  death  this  transparent  membrane  (the  conjunctiva) 
becomes  turbid,  the  eye  loses  its  lustre  and  becomes  veiled.  The 
surface  reflects  but  a  faint  degree  of  light,  the  eye  is  '  broken.' " 
The  loss  of  lustre  extends  to  the  white  of  the  eye,  but  is  less 
noticeable,  perhaps  because  there  lustre  does  not  blend  with 
colour,  as  in  the  iris  region. 

Fashionable  young  ladies  who  dance  throughout  the  night 
several  times  a  week  may  well  be  disgusted  with  the  blue  rings 
which  appear  around  their  sunken  eyes.  These  rings  are  a 
warning  that  they  need  "  beauty  sleep  "  and  fresh  air  to  fill  up  the 
sockets  again  with  healthy  fat  and  red  blood,  so  as  to  increase  the 
tension  of  the  conjunctiva  and  stimulate  the  flow  of  dewy  moisture 
on  which  the  lustre  of  the  eye  depends.  There  are  tears  of  Beauty 
as  well  as  of  anguish  and  joy. 


FORM 

Of  the  beauty  of  the  eye  as  conditioned  by  its  form,  Dr. 
Magnus  has  made  such  an  admirable  and  exhaustive  analysis 
that  I  can  do  little  more  than  summarise  his  observations.  He 
points  out,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  form  of  the  eyeball  itself  is 
of  subordinate  importance.  The  differences  in  the  size  and  shape 
of  eyeballs  are  insignificant,  and  are,  moreover,  liable  to  be  con- 
cealed by  the  shape  of  the  eyelids  ;  hence  it  is  to  the  lids  and  brows 
that  the  eye  chiefly  owes  its  formal  beauty. 

"  The  form  of  the  eye  is  conditioned  exclusively  by  the  cut  of 
the  lids  and  the  size  of  the  aperture  between  them.  .  .  .  The 
countless  individual  differences  in  this  aperture  give  to  the  eyeballs 
the  most  diverse  shapes,  so  that  we  speak  of  round  eyes,  wide 
eyes,  almond-shaped,  elongated,  and  owl  eyes,  etc." 

The  first  condition  of  beauty  in  an  eye  is  size.  Large  eyes 
have  been  extolled  ever  since  the  beginnings  of  poetry.  The 
Mahometan  heaven  is  peopled  with  "virgins  with  chaste  mien 
and  large  black  eyes,"  and  the  Arabian  poets  never  tire  of  com- 
paring their  idols'  eyes  to  those  of  the  gazelle  and  the  deer.  The 
Greeks  appear  to  have  considered  large  eyes  an  essential  trait  of 
beauty  as  well  as  of  mental  superiority ;  hence  Sokrates  as  well  as 
Aspasia  are  described  as  having  had  such  eyes  ;  and  who  has  not 
read  of  Horner's  ox-eyed  Juno  ?  Juvenal  specially  mentions  small 
eyes  as  a  blemish. 

Large  eyes,  however,  are  not  beautiful  if  the  aperture  between 
the  lids  is  too  wide,  or  if  the  white  can  be  seen  above  the  iris. 
They  must  owe  their  largeness  to  the  graceful  curvature  01  the 


THE  EYES  473 

upper  eyelid.  As  Winckelmann  remarks,  "  Jupiter,  Apollo,  and 
Juno  have  the  opening  of  their  eyelids  large  and  vaulted, 
and  less  elongated  than  is  usual,  so  as  to  make  the  arch  more 
pronounced." 

At  the  same  time  we  are  sufficiently  catholic  in  taste  to  admire 
eyes  which  are  not  quite  round  but  somewhat  elongated.  One 
favourite  variety  is  that  in  which  "  the  upper  lid  shows,  in  the 
margin  adjoining  the  inner  corner  of  the  eye,  a  rather  decided 
curvature,  which,  however,  diminishes  toward  the  outer  corner  in 
an  extremely  graceful  and  pleasing  wavy  line.  As  the  lower  lid 
has  a  similar,  though  less  decided,  marginal  curve,  the  eyeball 
which  appears  within  this  aperture  assumes  a  unique  oval  form, 
which  has  been  very  aptly  and  characteristically  named  *  almond- 
shaped.'  The  Greeks  compared  the  graceful  curve  of  such  lids  to 
the  delicate  and  pleasing  loops  formed  by  young  vines,  and  there- 
fore called  an  eye  of  this  variety  cAt/co/^/Ve^apo?.  Winckelmann 
has  noted  that  it  was  the  eyes  of  Venus,  in  particular,  that  the 
ancient  artists  were  fond  of  adorning  with  this  graceful  curve  of 
the  lids.  .  .  .  Italian,  and  especially  Spanish  eyes,  are  far-famed 
for  their  classical  and  graceful  oval  form." 

Almond  eyes  are  peculiar  to  the  Semitic  and  ancient  Aryan 
races.  Some  of  the  bards  of  India  sing  the  praises  of  an  eye 
so  elongated  that  it  reaches  to  the  ear ;  and  in  Assyrian  statues 
such  eyes  are  common.  The  ancient  Egyptians  had  a  similar 
taste ;  and  Carus  relates  that  some  Oriental  nations  actually  en- 
large the  slit  of  the  eye  with  the  knife ;  while  others  use  cosmetics 
to  simulate  the  appearance  of  very  long  eyes.  According  to  Dr. 
Sommering,  the  eye  of  male  Europeans  is  somewhat  less  elongated 
than  that  of  females. 

Kound  or  oval  marginal  curvature,  however,  is  not  the  only 
condition  of  beauty  in  an  eyelid.  The  surface,  too,  must  be 
kept  in  a  tense,  well-rounded  condition.  Sunken,  hollow  eyes 
displease  us  not  only  because  they  suggest  disease  and  age,  but 
because  they  destroy  the  smooth  surface  and  curvature  of  the 
eyelids.  Thus  do  we  find  the  laws  of  Health  and  Beauty  coin- 
ciding in  the  smallest  details. 

The  position  of  the  eye  also  largely  influences  our  aesthetic 
judgment.  What  strikes  us  first  in  looking  at  a  Chinaman  is 
his  obliquely-set  eyes,  with  the  outer  corner  drawn  upwards,  which 
displeases  us  even  more  than  their  excessive  elongation  and  small 
size.  Oblique  eyes  are  a  dissonance  in  the  harmony  of  our 
features,  and  almost  as  objectionable  as  a  crooked  mouth.  True, 
our  own  eyes  are  rarely  absolutely  horizontal,  but  the  deviation  is 


474  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

too  minute  to  be  noticed  by  any  but  a  trained  observer.  Some- 
times, as  Mantegazza  remarks,  the  opposite  form  may  be  noticed, 
the  outer  corner  of  the  eye  being  lower  than  the  inner.  "  If  this 
trait  is  associated  with  other  aesthetic  elements,  it  may  produce 
a  rare  and  extraordinary  charm,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Empress 
Eugenie." 

The  eyelashes  and  eyebrows,  though  strictly  belonging  in  the 
chapter  on  the  hair,  must  be  referred  to  here  because  they  bear 
such  a  large  part  in  the  impression  which  the  form  of  the  eye 
makes  on  us.  The  short,  stiff  hairs,  which  form  "the  fringed 
curtain  of  the  eye,"  are  attached  to  the  cartilage  which  edges  the 
eyelids.  They  are  not  straight  but  curved,  downward  in  the 
lower,  upward  in  the  upper  lid.  And  the  Beauty-Curve  is  ob- 
served in  still  another  way,  the  hairs  in  the  central  part  of 
each  lid  being  longer  than  they  are  towards  the  ends.  In  the 
upper  lid  the  hairs  are  longer  than  in  the  lower.  Their  aesthetic 
and  physiognomic  value  will  be  considered  presently  under  the 
head  of  Expression. 

In  the  eyebrows  the  Curve  of  Beauty  is  again  the  condition 
of  perfection.  It  must  be  a  gentle  curve,  however,  or  else  it 
imparts  to  the  countenance  a  Mephistophelian  expression  of  irony. 
Eyebrows  were  formerly  held  to  be  peculiar  to  man,  but  Darwin 
states  that  "in  the  Chimpanzee,  and  in  certain  species  of 
Macacus,  there  are  scattered  hairs  of  considerable  length  rising 
from  the  naked  skin  above  the  eyes,  and  corresponding  to  our 
eyebrows ;  similar  long  hairs  project  from  the  hairy  covering  ot 
the  superciliary  ridges  in  some  baboons." 

The  existence  of  the  eyebrows  may  be  accounted  for  on  utili- 
tarian grounds.  Natural  Selection  favoured  their  development 
because  they  are,  like  the  lashes,  of  use  in  preventing  perspiration 
and  dust  from  getting  into  the  eyes.  Their  delicately  curved  form, 
however,  they  probably  owe  to  Sexual  Selection.  Cupid  objects 
to  eyebrows  which  are  too  much  or  not  sufficiently  arched,  and  he 
objects  to  those  which  are  too  bushy  or  which  meet  in  the  middle. 
The  ancient  Greeks  already  disliked  eyebrows  meeting  in  the 
middle,  whereas  in  Rome  Fashion  not  only  approved  of  them, 
but  even  resorted  to  artificial  means  for  producing  them.  The 
Arabians  go  a  step  farther  in  the  use  of  paint.  They  endeavour 
to  produce  the  impression  as  if  their  eyebrows  grew  down  to  the 
middle  of  the  nose  and  met  there.  The  Egyptians,  Assyrians, 
Persians,  and  Indians  also  used  paint  to  make  their  eyebrows 
seem  wider,  but  they  did  not  unite  them.  On  the  outside  border 
the  eyebrows  should  extend  slightly  beyond  the  corner  of  the  eye. 


THE  EYES  475 


EXPRESSION 

In  the  chapter  on  the  nose  reference  was  made  to  our  disposi- 
tion to  seize  upon  any  sensation  experienced  inside  the  mouth  and 
label  it  as  a  "taste,"  whereas  psychologic  analysis  shows  that  in 
most  cases  the  sense  of  smell  (excited  during  exhalation)  has  more 
to  do  with  our  enjoyment  of  food  than  taste ;  and  that  the  nerves 
of  temperature  and  touch  likewise  come  into  play  in  the  case  of 
peppermint,  pungent  condiments,  alcohol,  etc.  We  are  also  in  the 
habit  of  including  in  the  term  "  feeling "  or  "  touch  "  the  entirely 
distinct  sensations  of  temperature,  tickling,  and  some  other  sensa- 
tions, to  the  separate  study  of  which  physiologists  are  only  now 
beginning  to  devote  special  attention. 

Similarly  with  the  eyes.  Being  the  most  fascinating  part  of 
the  face,  on  which  we  habitually  fix  our  attention  while  talking, 
they  are  credited  with  various  expressions  that  are  really  referable 
to  other  features,  which  we  rapidly  scan  and  then  transfer  their 
language  to  the  eyes.  Nor  is  this  all.  Most  persons  habitually 
attribute  to  the  varying  lustre  of  the  eyeball  diverse  "soulful" 
expressions  which,  as  physiologic  analysis  shows,  are  due  to  the 
movements  of  the  eyeball,  the  eyebrows,  and  lashes.  The  poets, 
who  have  said  so  many  beautiful  things  about  the  eyes,  are  rarely 
sufficiently  definite  to  lay  themselves  open  to  the  charge  of  inac- 
curacy. But  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  popular  opinion 
concerning  the  all-importance  of  the  eyeball  is  embodied  in  such 
expressions  as  these  :  "  Love,  anger,  pride,  and  avarice  all  visibly 
move  in  those  little  orbs  "  (Addison).  "  Her  eye  in  silence  has  a 
speech  which  eye  best  understands  "  (Southwell).  "  An  eye  like 
Mars  to  threaten  or  command."  "  The  heavenly  rhetoric  of  thine 
eye,  'gainst  which  the  world  cannot  hold  argument."  "Behold 
the  window  of  my  heart,  mine  eye."  "  Sometimes  from  her  eyes 
I  did  receive  fair  speechless  messages."  "  For  shame,  lie  not,  to 
say  mine  eyes  are  murderers."  "  If  mine  eyes  can  wound,  now  let 
them  kill  thee."  "  There's  an  eye  wounds  like  a  leaden  sword." 
The  last  three  of  these  Shaksperian  lines  were  evidently  echoing 
in  Emerson's  mind  when  he  wrote  that  "  Some  eyes  threaten  like 
a  loaded  and  levelled  pistol,  and  others  are  as  insulting  as  hissing 
or  kicking ;  some  have  no  more  expression  than  blueberries,  while 
others  as  deep  as  a  well  which  you  can  fall  into."  "  Glances  are 
the  first  billets-doux  of  love,"  says  Ninon  de  L'Enclos. 

In  order  to  make  perfectly  clear  the  mechanism  by  which 
the  eye  becomes  an  organ  of  speech,  it  is  advisable  to  consider 


476  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

separately  these  six  factors,  which  are  included  in  it —  (a)  Lustre ; 
(b)  Colour  of  the  Iris ;  (c)  Movements  of  the  Iris  or  Pupil ;  (d) 
Movements  of  the  Eyeball;  (e)  Movements  of  the  Eyelids;  (/) 
Movements  of  the  Eyebrows. 

(a)  Lustre. — "  The  physiological  problem  whether  the  surface 
of  the  eyeball,  independent  of  the  muscles  that  cover  and  surround 
it,  can  express  emotion,  a  near  study  of  the  American  girl  seems 
to  answer  quite  in  the  affirmative."  Dr.  G.  M.  Beard  remarks, 
without,  however,  endeavouring  to  specify  what  emotions  the 
surface  of  the  eyeball  expresses,  or  in  what  manner  it  does  express 
them. 

Dr.  Magnus,  on  the  other  hand,  who  has  made  a  more  profound 
study  of  this  question  than  any  other  writer,  is  emphatic  in  his 
conviction  that  "  the  eyeball  takes  no  active  part  in  the  expression 
of  emotions,  which  is  entirely  accomplished  by  the  muscles  and 
soft  parts  surrounding  it"  His  view  is  supported  by  the  fact  that 
although  some  of  the  ancient  sculptors  endeavoured  by  the  use  of 
jewels  or  by  chiselling  semi-lunar  or  other  grooves  into  the  eyeball 
to  simulate  its  lustre  by  means  of  shadows,  yet  as  a  rule  sculptors 
and  painters  strangely  neglect  the  careful  elaboration  of  the  eye- ' 
ball ;  and  in  the  Greek  works  of  the  best  period,  including  those 
of  Phidias,  the  eyeball  was  left  smooth  and  unadorned,  the  artists 
relying  especially  on  the  careful  chiselling  of  the  lids  and  brows 
for  the  attainment  of  the  particular  characteristic  expression 
desired. 

Nevertheless  Dr.  Magnus  goes  too  far  in  denying  that  ocular 
lustre  can  be  directly  expressive  of  mental  states  without  the 
assistance  of  the  movements  of  the  eyebrows  and  lids.  His  own 
observations  show  that  he  has  overstated  his  thesis.  We  can 
indeed,  he  says,  infer  from  the  appearance  of  the  eyeball,  "  whether 
the  soul  is  agitated  or  calm,  but  we  have  to  rely  on  the  facial 
muscles  to  specify  the  emotion.  This  is  the  reason  why  we  can 
never  judge  the  sentiments  of  one  who  is  masked ;  for  the  fire  in 
his  eye  can  only  indicate  to  us  his  greater  or  less  agitation,  but 
not  its  special  character.  That  we  could  only  read  in  the  features 
which  the  mask  conceals.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  orthodox 
Mahometan  makes  his  women  cover  up  their  face  with  a  veil 
which  leaves  nothing  exposed  but  the  eyes,  because  these  cannot, 
without  the  constant  play  of  the  facial  muscles,  indicate  the  emo- 
tional state.  The  lustre  of  the  corneal  mirror  therefore  indicates 
to  us  only  the  quantity,  but  never  the  quality  of  emotional  ex- 
citement." 

Herein  Dr.  Magnus  follows  the  assertion  of  Lebmn,  a  con- 


THE  EYES  477 

temporary  of  Louis  XIV.,  that  "the  eyeball  indicates  by  its  fire 
and  its  movements  in  general  that  the  soul  is  passionately  excited, 
but  not  in  what  manner." 

No  doubt  the  Turk  attains  his  object  in  leaving  only  the  eyes 
of  his  women  open  to  view,  for  thus  the  passing  stranger  cannot 
tell  whether  her  eye  flashes  Love  or  anger.  But  he  can  tell 
whether  she  is  agitated  or  indifferent :  and  is  not  that  a  language 
too  1  Do  we  not  call  music  the  "  language  of  emotions,"  although 
it  can  only  indicate  the  quantity  of  emotion,  and  rarely  its  precise 
quality — just  like  the  eyes  ?  Therefore  Dr.  Magnus  is  wrong  in 
denying  to  the  eyeball  the  power  of  emotional  expression.  Vague 
emotion  is  still  emotion. 

It  has  already  been  intimated  in  what  manner  emotional  excite- 
ment increases  the  eye's  lustre.  It  causes  the  blood-vessels  in  the 
sockets  of  the  eye  to  swell,  thus  increasing  the  tension  of  the  con- 
junctiva and  the  flow  of  the  lachrymal  fluid. 

Besides  quantitative  emotion  there  is  another  thing  which 
ocular  lustre  expresses,  and  that  is  Health.  It  is  true  that 
consumption,  fever,  and  possibly  other  diseases  may  produce  a 
peculiar  temporary  transparency  of  complexion  and  ocular  lustre  ; 
but,  as  a  rule,  a  bright  eye  indicates  Health  and  abundant  vitality. 

As  Health  is  the  first  condition  of  Love,  and  as  the  ocular 
lustre  which  indicates  Health  cannot  be  normally  secured  without 
it,  women  of  all  times  and  countries  have  been  addicted  to  the 
habit  of  increasing  the  eye's  sparkle  artificially  by  applying  a  thin 
line  of  black  paint  to  the  edge  of  the  lids.  The  ancient  Egyptians, 
Persians,  Hindoos,  Greeks,  and  Romans  followed  this  custom.  But 
the  natural  sparkle  which  comes  of  Health  and  Beauty-sleep  [i.e. 
before  midnight,  with  open  windows]  is  a  thousand  times  prefer- 
able to  such  dangerous  methods  of  tampering  with  the  most  deli- 
cate and  most  easily  injured  organ  of  the  body. 

Still  another  way  in  which  the  eyeball  itself  can  express  emotion 
is  by  the  varying  amount  on  it  of  the  lachrymal  fluid,  to  which,  in 
my  opinion,  its  lustre  is  chiefly  owing.  There  is  a  supreme  and 
thrilling  sparkle  of  the  eye  which  can  only  come  of  the  heavenly 
joys  of  Love ;  but  there  is  also  "  a  liquid  melancholy"  of  sweet 
eyes,  to  use  Bulwer's  words.  Scott  remarks  that  "  Love  is  love- 
liest when  embalmed  in  tears ; "  and  Dr.  Magnus  attests  that 
"  especially  in  the  eyes  of  lovers  we  often  find  a  slight  suspicion 
of  tears."  He  traces  to  this  fact  a  peculiar  charm  that  is  to  be 
found  in  the  eyes  of  Venus,  which  the  Greeks  called  vypov  (liquid, 
swimming,  languishing).  The  sculptors  produced  this  expression 
by  indicating  the  border  bet\veen  the  lower  lid  aud  the  eyeball  but 


478  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

slightly,  thus  giving  the  impression  as  if  this  border  were  veiled 
by  a  liquid  line  of  tear-fluid. 

What  enables  the  lid  to  keep  this  fluid  line  in  place  is  the  fact 
that  its  edge  is  lined  with  minute  glands  secreting  an  oily  sub- 
stance. The  presence  of  these  glands  in  the  upper  lid,  where  they 
cannot  serve  to  retain  lachrymal  fluid,  suggests  the  important 
inference  that  the  lustre  of  the  eye  may  be  partly  due  to  a  thin 
film  of  oil  spread  over  the  cornea  by  the  up-and-down  movements 
of  this  lid.  Indeed,  this  may  possibly  be  the  chief  cause  of  ocular 
lustre. 

When  the  lachrymal  fluid  habitually  present  in  the  eye  becomes 
too  abundant  it  ceases  to  express  amorous  tenderness,  and  becomes 
instead  indicative  of  old  age,  or,  worse  still,  of  intemperance. 
Alcoholism  has  a  peculiarly  demoralising  effect  on  the  lower  eye- 
lid, which  becomes  swollen  and  inflamed.  This  probably  over- 
stimulates  the  action  of  the  oil  glands  in  the  lids,  thus  accounting 
for  the  watery  or  blear  eye,  eloquent  of  vice. 

(6)  Colour  of  the  Iris. — There  is  nothing  in  which  popular 
physiognomy  takes  so  much  delight  as  in  pointing  out  what 
particular  characteristics  are  indicated  by  the  different  colours  of 
eyes.  All  such  distinctions  are  the  purest  drivel  We  have  seen 
that  differences  in  the  colour  of  eyes  are  entirely  due  to  the  varying 
amount  of  the  same  pigmentary  matter  present  in  the  iris.  Now, 
what  earthly  connection  could  a  greater  or  less  quantity  of  this 
colouring  matter  have  with  our  intellectual  or  moral  traits  ?  It  is 
necessary  thus  to  trace  facts  to  their  last  analysis  in  order  to  expose 
the  absurdities  of  current  physiognomy. 

Inasmuch  as  black-eyed  southern  nations  are,  on  the  whole, 
more  impulsive  than  northern  races,  it  may  be  said  in  a  vague, 
general  way  that  a  black  eye  indicates  a  passionate  disposition. 
But  there  are  countless  exceptions  to  this  rule — apathetic  black- 
eyed  persons,  as  well  as,  conversely,  fiery  blue-eyed  individuals. 
Nor  is  this  at  all  strange ;  for  the  black  colour  is  not  stored  up  in 
some  mysterious  way  as  a  result  of  a  fiery  temperament,  but  is 
simply  accumulated  in  the  iris  through  Natural  Selection,  as  a 
protection  against  glaring  sunlight. 

Although,  therefore,  the  brilliancy  of  the  eye  may  vary  with  its 
colour,  the  colour  itself  does  not  express  emotion,  either  qualitatively 
or  quantitatively.  In  reading  character  no  assistance  is  given  us 
by  the  fact  that  eyes  are  "  of  unholy  blue,"  "  darkly  divine,"  "gray 
as  glass,"  or  "  green  as  leeks."  Shakspere  calls  Jealousy  a  "  green- 
eyed  monster  " ;  and  the  green  iris  has  indeed  such  a  bad  reputation 
that  blondes  in  search  of  a  compliment  commonly  abuse  their 


THE  EYES  479 

"  green  "  eyes,  to  exercise  your  Gallantry,  and  give  you  a  chance  to 
defend  their  "celestial  blue"  or  "divine  violet." 

Dr.  Magnus  suggests  that  the  reason  why  we  dislike  decidedly 
green  or  yellow  eyes  is  simply  because  they  are  of  rare  occurrence, 
and  therefore  appear  anomalous ;  for  in  animals  we  do  not  hesitate 
to  pronounce  such  eyes  beautiful.  He  also  explains  ingeniously 
why  it  is  that  we  are  apt  to  attribute  moral  shortcomings  to  persons 
whose  eyes  are  of  a  vague,  dubious  colour.  Such  eyes  displease 
our  aesthetic  sense,  and  this  displeasure  we  transfer  to  the  moral 
sense,  and  thus  confound  and  prejudice  our  judgment.  In  the 
same  way  our  dislike  of  unusual  green  eyes  disposes  us  to  accuse 
their  owners  of  irregularities  of  conduct  Moral:  Keep  your 
sesthetic  and  ethical  judgments  apart. 

Conversely,  in  the  case  of  snakes,  our  fear  and  horror  make  it 
difficult  for  us  to  appreciate  the  esthetic  charm  of  their  colours. 
And  all  these  cases  show  that  the  aesthetic  sense,  if  properly 
understood  and  specialised,  is  independent  of  moral  and  utilitarian 
considerations :  which  knocks  the  bottom  out  of  the  theory  of 
Alison,  Jeffrey,  and  Co. 

One  more  abnormality  of  colour  in  the  iris  must  be  referred  to. 
It  happens  not  infrequently  that  the  colour  of  the  two  eyes  is  not 
alike,  one  being  brown,  the  other  blue  or  gray.  In  such 
cases,  though  each  eye  may  be  perfect  in  itself,  we  dislike  the 
combination.  What  is  the  ground  of  this  aesthetic  dislike  ?  Simply 
the  fact  that  the  dissimilarity  of  the  eyes  violates  one  of  the 
fundamental  laws  of  Beauty  —  the  law  of  Symmetry,  which 
demands  that  corresponding  parts  on  the  two  sides  of  the  body 
should  harmonise. 

(c)  Movements  of  the  Iris. — The  jetblack  pupil  of  the  eye,  as 
already  noted,  is  not  always  of  the  same  size.  It  becomes  smaller 
if  an  excess  of  light  causes  the  iris  to  relax,  larger  if  diminution  of 
light  makes  the  iris  contract  its  fibres.  Another  way  of  altering 
the  size  of  the  pupil  is  by  gazing  at  a  distant  object,  which  causes 
it  to  enlarge,  while  gazing  at  a  near  object  makes  it  smaller. 
According  to  Gratiolet  and  some  other  writers,  there  is  still  another 
way  in  which  the  pupil  is  affected,  namely,  through  emotional 
excitement.  Great  fear,  for  instance,  enlarges  the  pupil,  according 
to  Gratiolet.  Dr.  Magnus,  however,  remarks  that,  apart  from  the 
fact  that  some  observers  have  denied  that  the  pupil  is  affected  by 
emotions,  the  alterations  in  its  size  are  as  a  rule  too  insignificant 
to  be  noted  by  any  but  a  trained  observer ;  so  that  they  could  not 
play  any  important  physiognomic  role. 

Yet  a  large  pupil  is  everywhere  esteemed  a  great  beauty,  and  ia 


480  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

often  credited  with  a  special  power  of  amorous  expression. 
"Widened  pupils,"  says  Kollmann,  "give  the  eye  a  tender  aspect; 
they  seem  to  increase  its  depth,  and  fascinate  the  spectator  by  the 
strangeness  this  imparts  to  the  gaze.  Oriental  women  put  atropine 
into  their  eyes,  which  enlarges  the  pupil.  They  do  this  in  order 
to  give  their  eyes  the  soulful  expression  which  they  believe  is 
imparted  by  large  pupils,  distinctly  foreshadowing  the  joys  of  love." 

Whether  emotionally  expressive  or  not,  so  much  is  certain  that 
large  pupils  are  more  beautiful  than  small  ones,  for  the  same  reason 
that  large  eyes  are  more  beautiful  than  small  ones,  i.e.  because  we 
cannot  have  too  much  of  a  thing  of  Beauty. 

Finally,  there  is  this  to  be  said  regarding  the  lustre,  colour,  and 
size  of  pupil  and  iris,  that  they  emphasise  the  language  of  the  eye. 
If  we  play  a  love-song  on  the  piano,  we  may  admire  it ;  but  if  it 
is  sung  or  played  on  the  violoncello,  it  makes  a  doubly  deep 
impression  ;  and  why  ?  Because  i/he  superior  sensuous  beauty  of 
the  voice,  or  the  amorous  tone-colour  of  the  'cello,  paints  and  gilds 
the  bare  fabric  of  the  song.  A  small  dull-coloured  eye,  similarly, 
may  speak  quite  as  definite  a  language  of  command  or  entreaty,. 
pride  or  humility,  as  any  other ;  but  the  flashing  large  pupil  and 
the  lustrous  deep-dyed  iris  intensify  the  emotional  impressiveness  of 
this  language  a  hundredfold,  by  adding  the  incalculable  power  of 
sensuous  Beauty.  Thus  lustre  and  colour  are  for  the  visible  music 
of  the  spheres  what  orchestration  is  to  audible  music. 

(d)  Movements  of  the  Eyeball. — The  socket  of  the  eye  contains 
(besides  the  fat-cushion  in  which  the  eyeball  is  imbedded,  the 
blood-vessels,  and  other  tissues)  seven  muscles ;  one  for  raising  the 
upper  lid,  and  six  for  moving  the  eyeball  itself  upwards,  downwards, 
inwards,  outwards,  or  forwards  and  obliquely.  To  the  action  of 
these  muscles  the  eye  owes  much  of  its  expressiveness. 

It  has  been  noted  that  elating  emotions  have  a  tendency  to  raise 
the  features,  depressing  emotions  to  depress  them.  The  eyeball  is 
no  exception.  Persons  who  are  elated  by  their  real  or  apparent 
superiority  to  others  turn  their  eyes  habitually  from  the  humble 
things  beneath  them ;  hence  the  muscle  which  turns  the  eyeball 
upwards  has  long  ago  received  the  name  of  "pride-muscle";  wh.ile 
its  antipode,  the  miisculus  humilis,  is  so  called  because  humility 
and  modesty  are  characterised  by  a  downward  gaze. 

The  muscle  which  turns  the  eyeball  towards  the  inner  corner, 
nosewards,  is  much  used  by  persons  who  are  occupied  with  near 
objects.  If  this  convergence  of  the  eyes  is  too  pronounced,  it  gives 
one  a  stupid  expression ;  whereas,  if  moderate,  the  expression  is 
one  of  great  intellectual  penetration,  as  Dr.  Magnus  points  out. 


THE  EYES  481 

He  believes  that  the  trick,  made  use  of  by  some  portrait-painters, 
of  making  the  eyes  appear  to  follow  you  wherever  you  go  depends 
on  this  medium  degree  of  convergence  of  the  eyes. 

Slight  divergence  of  the  eyeballs,  on  the  other  hand,  is  charac- 
teristic of  children  and  of  great  thinkers  —  an  item  which 
Schopenhauer  forgot  to  note  when  he  pointed  out  that  genius 
always  retains  certain  traits  of  childhood.  "  Bonders,"  says  Dr. 
Magnus,  "  has  always  observed  this  divergent  position  oi  the  eyes 
in  persons  who  meditate  deeply.  And  the  artists  make  use  of  this 
position  of  the  eyes  to  give  their  figures  the  expression  of  a  soul 
averted  from  terrestrial  affairs,  and  fixed  on  higher  spiritual  objects. 
Thus  the  Sistine  Madonna  has  this  divergent  position  oi  the  eyes, 
as  well  as  the  beautiful  boy  she  carries  on  her  arm."  It  is  also 
found  in  Diirer's  portrait  of  himself,  and  in  a  bust  of  Marcus 
Aurelius  in  the  Vatican. 

If,  however,  this  divergence  becomes  too  great,  it  loses  its 
charm,  for  the  eyes  then  appear  to  fix  no  object  at  all,  and  the 
gaze  becomes  "vacant,"  as  in  the  eyes  of  the  blind  or  the  sick. 
To  appreciate  the  force  of  these  remarks  it  must  be  borne  in  mind 
that  there  is  only  one  part  of  the  retina,  called  the  "  yellow  spot," 
with  which  we  can  distinctly  fix  an  object.  What  we  see  with 
other  parts  of  the  retina  is  indistinct,  blurred. 

These  details  are  here  given  because  many  will  be  glad  to  know 
that  by  daily  exercising  the  muscles  of  the  eyeballs  before  the 
mirror,  they  can  greatly  alter  and  improve  their  looks.  Every  day 
one  hears  the  remark,  "  She  has  beautiful  eyes,  but  she  does  not 
know  how  to  use  them."  When  we  read  of  a  great  thinker,  like 
Kant,  fixing  his  gaze  immovably  on  a  tree  for  an  hour,  we  think  it 
quite  natural ;  nor  does  any  one  object  to  "  the  poet's  eye,  in  a  fine 
frenzy  rolling,"  for  we  all  know  that  a  poet  is  merely  an  inspired 
madman.  But  a  young  lady  who  wishes  to  charm  by  her  Beauty 
must  learn  to  fix  her  wandering  eyes  calmly  on  others,  while 
avoiding  a  stony  stare.  One  of  the  greatest  charms  of  American 
girls  is  their  frank,  steady  gaze,  free  from  any  tinge  of  unfeminine 
boldness.  Such  a  charming  natural  gaze  can  only  be  acquired  in 
a  country  where  girls  are  taught  to  look  upon  men  as  gentlemen, 
and  not  as  wolves,  against  whom  they  must  be  guarded  by  dragons. 

Eye-gymnastics  are  as  important  to  Beauty  as  lung-gymnastics 
to  Health,  and  dancing-lessons  to  Grace.  But  of  course  there  is  a 
certain  number  of  fortunate  girls  who  can  dispense  with  such 
exercises,  because  they  gradually  learn  the  proper  use  of  their  eyes, 
as  well  as  general  graceful  movements,  from  the  example  of  a 
refined  mother. 


482  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Goldsmith's  pretty  line  about  "the  bashful  virgin's  sidelong 
looks  of  love,"  is  not  a  mere  poetic  conceit,  but  a  scientific  aper$u  ; 
for,  as  Professor  Kollmanu  remarks,  "  the  external  straight  muscle 
of  the  eye  was  also  called  the  lover's  muscle,  musculus  amatorius, 
because  the  furtive  side-glance  is  aimed  at  a  beloved  person." 

Nor  is  this  the  only  way  in  which  the  movements  of  the  eye- 
ball are  concerned  with  Romantic  Love.  By  constantly  exercising 
certain  muscles  of  the  eyeball  in  preference  to  others,  the  eyes 
gradually  assume,  when  at  rest,  a  fixed  and  peculiar  gaze  which 
distinguishes  them  from  all  other  eyes.  It  is  comparatively  easy 
to  find  two  pairs  of  eyes  of  the  same  colour  or  form,  but  two  with 
the  same  gaze,  i.e.  characteristic  position  of  the  eyeballs,  never. 
Hence  Dr.  Magnus  boldly  generalises  Herder's  statement  that 
"  Every  great  man  has  a  look  which  no  one  but  he  can  give  with 
his  eyes,"  into  the  maxim  that  "  Every  individual  has  a  look  which 
no  one  else  can  make  with  his  eyes." 

Bungling  photographers  commonly  spoil  their  pictures  by  com- 
pelling their  victims  to  fix  their  eyes  in  an  unwonted  position. 
The  result  is  a  picture  which  bears  some  general  resemblance  to 
the  victim,  but  in  which  the  characteristic  individual  expression  is 
wanting. 

Our  habit  of  masking  our  eyes  alone  when  we  wish  to  remain 
unrecognised,  and  leaving  the  lower  part  of  the  face  exposed, 
affords  another  proof  of  the  assertion  that  the  eye  is  the  chief  seat 
of  individuality.  For  though  the  eyeball  itself  remains  visible,  the 
surrounding  parts  are  covered,  so  that  its  characteristic  position 
cannot  be  determined. 

Now  we  know  that  Individual  Preference  is  the  first  and  most 
essential  element  of  Romantic  Love.  Hence  Dante  was  as  correct 
in  calling  the  eyes  "  the  beginning  of  Love,"  as  in  terming  the  lips 
"  the  end  of  Love."  And  Shakspere  agrees  with  Dante  when  he 
speaks  of  "Love  first  learned  in  a  lady's  eyes";  and  again :  "  But 
for  her  eye  I  would  not  love  her ;  yes,  for  her  two  eyes." 

(e)  Movements  of  the  Eyelids. — Although  the  foregoing  pages 
considerably  qualify  Dr.  Magnus's  thesis  that  the  eyeball  owes  all 
its  life  and  expressiveness  to  the  movements  of  the  eyelids  and 
brows,  yet  the  physiognomic  and  aesthetic  importance  of  lids, 
lashes,  and  brows  can  hardly  be  too  much  emphasised.  A  very 
large  proportion  of  the  pleasure  we  derive  from  beautiful  eyes  is 
due  to  the  constant  changes  in  the  apparent  size  of  the  eyeball, 
and  the  gradations  in  its  lustre,  produced  by  the  rapid  movements 
of  the  upper  lid.  This  is  strikingly  proved  by  the  fact,  noted  by 
Dr.  Magnus,  "  that  the  eyes  of  wax  figures,  be  they  ever  so 


THE  EYES  483 

artistically  finished,  always  give  the  impression  of  death  and 
rigidity,"  whereas  "artificial  eyes,  such  as  are  often  inserted  by 
physicians  after  the  loss  of  an  eye,  have,  thanks  to  the  constant 
play  of  the  lids,  an  appearance  so  animated  and  lifelike  that  it 
requires  the  trained  eye  of  a  specialist  to  detect  the  dead,  lifeless 
glass-eye  in  this  apparently  so  animated  orb." 

A  complete  emotional  scale  is  symbolised  in  these  movements  of 
the  upper  eyelids.  A  medium  position  indicates  rest  or  indiffer- 
ence. Joyous  and  other  exciting  emotions  raise  them,  so  that  the 
whole  of  the  lustrous  iris  becomes  visible.  Thus  we  get  the  eye 
"  sparkling  with  joy  "  or  the  "  angry  flash  of  the  eye,"  as  well  as 
Cupid's  darts  :  "He  is  already  dead ;  stabbed  with  a  white  wench's 
black  eye."  "  Alack,  there  lies  more  peril  in  thine  eye  than  twenty 
of  their  swords." 

But  if  the  lids  are  raised  too  high,  so  that  the  white  above  the 
iris  becomes  visible,  the  expression  changes  to  one  of  affectation, 
or  maniacal  wildness,  or  extreme  terror.  There  are  persons,  says 
Magnus,  in  whom  the  aperture  between  the  lids  is  naturally  so 
wide  as  to  reveal  the  upper  white  of  the  eyes ;  and  in  consequence 
we  are  apt  to  accuse  them  of  hollow  pathos.  I  have  seen  not  a 
few  beautiful  pairs  of  eyes  marred  by  the  habitual  tendency  to 
raise  the  lids  too  much — a  fault  that  can  be  readily  overcome  by 
deliberate  effort  and  practice  before  the  mirror. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  aperture  between  the  lids  is  too  small, 
that  is,  if  the  lids  are  naturally  (or  only  transiently)  lowered  too 
much,  we  get  an  apathetic,  drowsy  expression.  The  Chinese  eye 
displeases  us  not  only  by  its  oblique  set,  and  the  narrowness  of  the 
lid,  but  also  because  the  natural  smallness  of  the  eyeball  is 
exaggerated  by  the  narrow  palpebral  aperture.  The  negro  appears 
more  wide  awake  to  us,  because  in  his  eyes  this  aperture  is  wider 
— so  wide,  in  fact,  that  he  is  apt  to  displease  us  by  showing  too 
much  of  the  white  sclerotic. 

A  very  drooping  eyelid  being  expressive  of  fatigue,  physical  or 
mental,  blase  persons  affect  it  in  order  to  indicate  their  nil 
admirari  attitude.  But  there  is  another  secret  reason  why  they 
drop  their  eyelids.  If  we  lower  the  head  and  open  our  eyes  widely, 
they  retire  within  their  sockets  and  appear  hollow,  suggesting  dis- 
sipation or  disease;  whereas,  if  we  raise  the  head,  throwing  it 
slightly  backwards,  and  lowering  the  eyelids,  we  obliterate  this 
hollow,  and  give  the  impression  of  languid  indifference.  This, 
rather  than  the  "  raising  of  the  eyebrows,"  is  what  constitutes  the 
"  supercilious  "  expression. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  a  supercilious  appearance  is  specially 


484  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

attractive,  yet  the  obliteration  of  the  eyes'  hollowness  is  an  advan- 
tage ;  and  it  may  be  added  that,  since  perfect  health  is  not  a  super- 
abundant phenomenon,  the  same  reasoning  explains  why  many 
faces  are  so  much  more  fascinating  in  a  reclining  or  semi-reclining 
position  than  when  upright.  Fashion,  of  course,  being  the  hand- 
maid of  ugliness,  does  not  object  to  hollow  eyes  encircled  by  blue 
rings,  but  even  cultivates  them.  Yet  in  her  heart  of  hearts  every 
fashionable  woman  knows  that  nothing  so  surely  kills  masculine 
admiration — not  to  speak  of  Love — as  sunken  eyes  with  blue 
rings. 

A  slight  drooping  of  the  eyelids,  on  the  other  hand,  gives  a 
pleasing  expression  of  amorous  languor.  The  lid,  with  its  lashes, 
in  this  case,  coyly  veils  the  lustre  of  the  eye,  without  extinguishing 
it.  Hence,  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Magnus,  the  sculptors  of  antiquity 
made  use  of  this  slight  lowering  of  the  lid  to  express  sensuous 
love ;  and  accordingly  it  was  customary  to  chisel  the  eyes  of  Venus 
with  drooping  lids  and  a  small  aperture. 

In  their  task  of  moderating  and  varying  the  lustre  of  the  eye- 
ball, the  lids  are  greatly  assisted  by  the  lashes.  An  eye  with 
missing  or  too  short  lashes  is  apt  to  appear  too  fiery,  glaring,  or 
"  stinging."  Long  dark  eyelashes  are  of  all  the  means  of  flirtation 
the  most  irresistible.  Note  yonder  artful  maiden.  How  modestly 
and  coyly  she  droops  her  eyes,  till  suddenly  the  fringed  curtain  is 
raised  and  a  glorious  symphony  of  colour  and  lustre  is  flashed  on 
her  poor  companion's  dazed  vision !  No  wonder  he  staggers  and 
falls  in  love  at  first  sight. 

"White  lashes  and  eyebrows  are  so  disagreeably  suggestive," 
we  read  in  the  Uyly  Girl  Papers,  "  that  one  cannot  blame  their 
possessor  for  disguising  them  by  a  harmless  device.  A  decoction 
of  walnut  juice  should  be  made  in  season,  and  kept  in  a  bottle  for 
use  the  year  round.  It  is  to  be  applied  with  a  small  hair-pencil 
to  the  brows  and  lashes,  turning  them  to  a  rich  brown,  which  har- 
monises with  fair  hair."  Another  recipe  given,  by  a  good  authority, 
is  as  follows :  "  Take  frankincense,  resin,  pitch,  of  each  one  half 
ounce ;  gum  mastic,  quarter  of  an  ounce ;  mix  and  drop  on  red- 
hot  charcoals.  Receive  the  fumes  in  a  large  funnel,  and  a  black 
powder  will  adhere  to  its  sides.  Mix  this  with  fresh  juice  of 
elderberries  (or  Cologne  water  will  do),  and  apply  with  a  fine 
camel-hair  brush." 

Those  who  wish  to  make  their  lashes  longer  and  more  regular 
may  find  the  following  suggestions,  by  Drs.  Brinton  and  Napheys, 
of  use  :  "  The  eyelashes  should  be  examined  one  by  one,  and  any 
which  are  split,  or  crooked,  or  feeble,  should  be  trimmed  with  a 


THE  EYES  485 

pair  of  sharp  scissors.  The  base  of  the  lashes  should  be  anointed 
nightly  with  a  minute  quantity  of  oil  of  cajuput  on  the  top  of  a 
camel-hair  brush,  and  the  examination  and  trimming  repeated 
every  month.  If  this  is  sedulously  carried  out  for  a  few  mouths 
the  result  will  be  gratifying." 

All  such  operations  should  be  performed  by  another  person,  for 
the  eye  is  a  most  delicate  organ.  Yet,  not  even  this  organ  has 
been  spared  by  deforming  Fashion.  The  fact  that  some  Africans 
colour  their  eyelids  black  may  have  a  utilitarian  rather  than  a 
cosmetic  reason.  But  what  shall  we  say  to  the  Africans  who 
eradicate  their  eyebrows,  and  the  Paraguayans,  who  remove  their 
eyelashes  because  they  "  do  not  wish  to  be  like  horses  1 " 

Twin  sisters  ever  are  Fashion  and  Idiocy. 

(/)  Movements  of  tJie  Eyebrows. — Herder  called  the  arched  eye- 
brow the  rainbow  of  peace,  because  if  it  is  straightened  by  a  frown 
it  portends  a  storm.  In  plain  prose,  the  eyebrow  partakes  of  the 
general  upward  movement  from  joyous  excitement,  and  the  down- 
ward movement  in  grief.  If  the  eyebrows  are  too  bushy,  they 
overshadow  the  eye  and  produce  a  gloomy  or  even  ferocious  appear- 
ance. The  Chinese,  possibly  from  an  instinctive  perception  that 
their  eyes  are  not  too  large  or  bright,  shave  their  eyebrows,  leaving 
only  a  narrow  fringe.  Dr.  Broca  also  notes  that  the  eyebrow  adds 
to  the  oblique  appearance  of  the  Chinese  eye  through  a  particular 
movement,  the  two  internal  thirds  of  the  eyebrows  being  lower, 
and  the  external  third  higher  than  with  us. 

Though  not,  perhaps,  directly  concerned  in  the  expression  of 
Love,  the  eyebrow  is  not  to  be  under-rated.  No  detail  of  Beauty 
escapes  Cupid's  eyes ;  for  do  we  not  read  of  "  the  lover,  sighing 
like  furnace,  with  a  woeful  ballad  made  to  his  mistress's  eye- 
brows"? 

COSMETIC   HINTS 

As  modem  lovers  disapprove  of  eyebrows  meeting  over  the  nose, 
superfluous  hairs  should  be  removed.  Coarse  irregular  hairs  in 
any  part  of  the  eyebrow  should  be  pulled  out  or  kept  in  position 
by  a  fixateur.  "  It  is  not  well  to  trim  the  eyebrow  generally, 
as  it  makes  it  coarse.  .  .  .  When  it  is  desired  to  thicken  or 
strengthen  them,  two  or  three  drops  of  oil  of  cajuput  may  be 
gently  rubbed  into  the  skin  every  other  night;  but  here,  and 
always  when  wiping  them,  the  rubbing  should  be  in  the  direction 
of  the  hair,  from  the  nose  outward,  and  never  in  the  reverse 
direction."  Among  harmless  dyes,  pencils  of  dark  pomatum  or 
walnut-bark,  steeped  in  Cologne  for  a  week,  are  recommended; 


486  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

or,  for  a  transient  effect,  a  needle  smoked  over  the  flame  of  a 
candle  may  be  used. 

Regarding  the  general  hygienic  care  of  the  eye,  the  following 
rules  should  be  borne  in  mind.  Never  read  or  work  in  a  too  weak 
or  too  glaring  light,  or  when  lying  down,  or  with  the  book  too  near 
the  eye.  Rest  the  muscles  occasionally  by  looking  at  a  distant 
object.  Bathe  the  eyes  every  morning  in  cold  water,  keeping  tJiem 
closed.  For  disorders,  consult  a  physician  immediately;  a  day's 
delay  may  be  fatal  to  ocular  beauty.  For  ordinary  inflammation, 
an  external  application  of  witch-hazel  extract,  mixed  with  a  few 
drops  of  Cologne,  is  very  soothing.  Never  sleep  with  your  eyes 
facing  the  window.  Ninety-nine  persons  in  a  hundred  do  so; 
hence  the  large  number  of  weak,  lustreless  eyes,  early  disturbances 
of  slumber,  and  morning  headaches.  Large  numbers  of  tourists  in 
Switzerland  constantly  suffer  from  headaches,  and  lose  all  the 
benefits  of  their  vacation,  simply  because  they  fail  to  have  their 
head  at  night  in  the  centre  of  the  room,  where  it  ought  to  be, 
because  the  air  circulates  there  more  freely  than  near  the  wall 


THE    HAIR 

CAUSE  OF  MAN'S  NUDITY 

"  From  the  presence  of  the  woolly  hair  or  lanugo  on  the  human 
foetus,  and  of  rudimentary  hairs  scattered  over  the  body  during 
maturity,"  Darwin  inferred  that  "man  is  descended  from  some 
animal  which  was  born  hairy  and  remained  so  during  life."  He 
believed  that  "  the  loss  of  hair  is  an  inconvenience  and  probably  an 
injury  to  man,  even  in  a  hot  climate,  for  he  is  thus  exposed  to  the 
scorching  in  the  sun,  and  to  sudden  chills,  especially  during  wet 
weather.  As  Mr.  Wallace  remarks,  the  natives  in  all  countries  are 
glad  to  protect  their  naked  backs  and  shoulders  with  some  slight 
covering.  No  one  supposes  that  the  nakedness  of  the  skin  is  any 
direct  advantage  to  man ;  his  body,  therefore,  cannot  have  been 
divested  of  hair  through  Natural  Selection."  Accordingly,  he  con- 
cludes that  man  lost  his  hairy  covering  through  Sexual  Selection, 
for  ornamental  purposes. 

But  if  it  can  be  shown  that  the  nakedness  of  his  skin  M  in  some 
way  of  advantage  to  man,  this  argument  falls  to  the  ground. 
There  are  sufficient  reasons,  I  think,  for  believing  that  Natural 
Selection  aided  Sexual  Selection  in  divesting  man  of  his  hairy  coat. 

With  his  usual  candour  Darwin  noticed  the  evidence  which 


THE  HAIR  487 

seemed  to  tell  against  his  view.  Mr.  Belt,  he  says,  "  believes  that 
within  the  tropics  it  is  an  advantage  to  man  to  be  destitute  of  hair, 
as  he  is  thus  enabled  to  free  himself  of  the  multitude  of  ticks 
(acari)  and  other  parasites  with  which  he  is  often  infested,  and 
which  sometimes  cause  ulceration."  Darwin  doubts,  however, 
whether  this  evil  is  of  sufficient  magnitude  to  have  led  to  the 
denudation  of  the  body  through  Natural  Selection,  "  since  none  of 
the  many  quadrupeds  inhabiting  the  tropics  have,  as  far  as  I 
know,  acquired  any  specialised  means  of  relief.''  But  as  primitive 
man's  habits  of  cleanliness  are  much  inferior  to  those  of  animals, 
this  objection  loses  its  force ;  and  it  is,  moreover,  weakened  by  the 
testimony  of  Sir  W.  Denison  that  "  it  is  said  to  be  a  practice  with 
the  Australians,  when  the  vermin  get  troublesome,  to  singe  them- 
selves." We  also  know  that  the  ancient  Egyptains  shaved  off  their 
hair  from  motives  of  cleanliness. 

However,  it  is  not  likely  that  the  superior  advantages  of  clean- 
liness and  freedom  from  parasites  would  alone  have  sufficed  to 
produce  so  great  a  change  in  man  as  the  loss  of  his  hair.  It  is 
more  probable  that  the  sun  was  the  chief  agent  in  accomplishing 
this  transformation.  I  fail  to  see  the  force  of  Darwin's  contention 
that  the  fact  that  "  the  other  members  of  the  order  of  Primates,  to 
which  man  belongs,  although  inhabiting  various  hot  regions,  are 
well  clothed  with  hair,  generally  thickest  on  the  upper  surface,  is 
opposed  to  the  supposition  that  man  became  naked  through  the 
action  of  the  sun."  For  these  animals  commonly  live  in  forests 
and  on  trees,  where  they  are  protected  from  the  rays  of  the  sun, 
which  is  not  the  case  with  man. 

Furthermore,  Darwin  himself  mentions  some  circumstances 
which  point  to  the  conclusion  that  the  sun  is  the  cause  of  man's 
nudity.  He  says,  for  instance,  that  "elephants  and  rhinoceroses 
are  almost  hairless ;  and  as  certain  extinct  species  which  formerly 
lived  under  an  arctic  climate  were  covered  with  long  wool  or  hair, 
it  would  almost  appear  as  if  the  existing  species  of  both  genera 
had  lost  their  hairy  covering  from  exposure  to  heat.  This  appears 
the  more  probable  as  the  elephants  in  India  which  live  on  elevated 
and  cool  districts  are  more  hairy  than  those  on  the  lowlands." 

Bearing  in  mind  what  was  said  in  the  chapter  on  the  Com- 
plexion regarding  the  negro's  skin,  there  is  no  difficulty  in  under- 
standing why  Natural  Selection  should  eliminate  the  hairy  covering 
of  the  skin  while  favouring  a  dark  complexion.  Hair  not  only 
absorbs  the  sun's  heat,  but  retains  that  of  the  body ;  hence  a  hairy 
man  not  living  on  trees  would  be  very  uncomfortable  in  Africa, 
and  likely  to  succumb  to  the  enervating  effects  of  high  temperature. 


488  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

The  negro's  naked  skin,  on  the  other  hand,  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
specially  devised  as  a  body-cooler.  The  black  pigment  protects 
the  underlying  nerves  of  temperature,  while  the  solar  heat  absorbed 
by  this  pigment  is  immediately  radiated  iu  the  form  of  perspiration. 
Now  we  can  see  not  only  why  the  negro's  skin  is  more  velvety, 
smooth,  and  hairless  than  our  own,  but  why  its  sweat-pores  are 
larger  and  more  numerous  than  in  our  skin. 

At  a  later  stage  of  evolution  Sexual  Selection  probably  came  in 
to  aid  in  this  process  of  denudation.  We  may  infer  this,  in  the 
first  place,  from  the  analogous  case  of  apes  who  have  denuded  and 
variously-coloured  patches  on  the  head  and  elsewhere,  which  they 
use  for  purposes  of  display,  to  attract  the  notice  of  the  opposite 
sex ;  in  the  second  place,  from  the  fact  that  there  are  not  a  few 
tribes  who  pluck  out  their  hairs.  "The  Fuegians  threatened  a 
young  missionary,  who  was  left  for  a  time  with  them,  to  strip  him 
naked,  and  pluck  the  hairs  from  his  face  and  body,  yet  he  was  far 
from  being  a  hairy  man ;"  and  "  throughout  the  world  the  races 
which  are  almost  completely  destitute  of  a  beard,  dislike  hairs  on 
the  face  and  body,  and  take  pains  to  eradicate  them."  Darwin 
also  notes  some  facts  which,  by  analogy,  seem  to  make  it  probable 
that  "  the  long-continued  habit  of  eradicating  the  hair  may  have 
produced  an  inherited  effect." 

In  the  case  of  the  white  race  we  cannot  rely  so  much  on  the 
action  of  the  sun  as  accounting  for  the  absence  of  hair,  but  must 
place  more  especial  emphasis  on  Sexual  Selection.  We  are  war- 
ranted in  doing  this  by  the  consideration  that  Taste  for  Beauty  is 
more  developed  in  the  white  race,  and  therefore  has  more  influence 
in  controlling  the  choice  of  a  mate.  "  As  the  body  in  woman  is 
less  hairy  than  in  man,  and  as  this  character  is  common  to  all 
races,  we  may  conclude"  with  Darwin  "that  it  was  our  female 
semi -human  ancestors  who  were  first  divested  of  hair,"  this 
character  being  then  transmitted  by  the  mothers  to  their  children 
of  both  sexes. 

The  two  universal  traits  of  Beauty  which  chiefly  guided  man  in 
the  preference  of  a  hairless  skin  were  evidently  Smoothness  and 
Colour.  One  need  only  compare  for  a  moment  the  face  of  a  female 
chimpanzee,  its  leathery  folded  skin  and  straggling  hairs,  with  the 
smooth  and  rosy  complexion  of  a  European  damsel,  to  understand 
that,  leaving  touch  out  of  consideration,  sight  alone  would  have 
sufficed  to  give  the  preference  to  the  hairless  skin.  But  since  we 
derive  less  direct  advantage  than  the  tropical  races  from  such  a 
skin,  cases  of  reversion  to  the  hairy  type  are  more  common  among 
us  than  with  them,  and  our  bodies  in  general  are  more  hairy. 


THE  HAIR  489 


BEARDS  AND   MOUSTACHES 

The  elimination  of  hair  from  those  parts  of  the  body  where  it  is 
less  beautiful  than  a  nude  skin,  is  only  one  of  the  functions  of 
Sexual  Selection.  Another  equally  important  function  is  the  pre- 
servation and  elongation  of  the  hair  in  a  few  places  for  ornamental 
purposes. 

"  We  know  from  Eschricht,"  says  Darwin,  "  that  with  mankind 
the  female  as  well  as  the  male  foetus  is  furnished  with  much  hair 
on  the  face,  especially  round  the  mouth ;  and  this  indicates  that 
we  are  descended  from  progenitors  of  whom  both  sexes  were  bearded. 
It  appears,  therefore,  at  first  sight,  probable  that  man  has  retained 
his  beard  from  a  very  early  period,  whilst  woman  lost  her 
beard  at  the  same  time  that  her  body  became  almost  completely 
divested  of  hair." 

A  long  beard  serves,  to  some  extent,  to  protect  the  throat,  but 
a  moustache  serves  no  such  use,  and  it  seems  therefore  more  pro- 
bable that  beards  as  well  as  moustaches  were  developed  in  man  for 
ornamental  purposes,  as  in  many  monkeys  (see,  for  some  very 
curious  pictures  of  bearded  monkeys,  Descent  of  Man,  chap,  xviii.) 
But  why  should  women  have  lost  their  beards  while  men  retained 
theirs  ?  Because  of  the  importance  of  emphasising  the  secondary 
sexual  differences  between  man  and  woman,  on  which  the  degree 
of  amorous  infatuation  depends.  The  tendency  of  evolution,  as  we 
have  seen,  has  been  to  make  the  sexes  more  and  more  different  in 
appearance ;  and  as  man  chooses  his  mate  chiefly  on  aesthetic 
grounds,  he  habitually  gave  the  preference  to  smooth-faced  women, 
whereas  woman's  choice,  being  largely  based  on  dynamic  grounds, 
fell  on  the  bearded  and  moustached  men,  since  a  luxurious  growth 
of  hair  is  commonly  a  sign  of  physical  vigour.  Hence  the  humilia- 
tion of  the  young  man  who  cannot  raise  a  moustache,  and  the 
reciprocal  horror  of  the  young  lady  who  finds  the  germs  of  one  on 
her  lip.  Both  are  instinctively  afraid  of  being  "  boycotted "  by 
Cupid,  and  for  ever  debarred  from  the  pleasures  of  mutual  Romantic 
Love. 

Women  are  quite  right  in  dreading  hair  in  the  face  as  a  blemish, 
for  it  is  not  only  objectionable  as  a  masculine  trait,  but  also  as  a  cha- 
racteristic of  old  age,  a  hairy  face  being  quite  a  common  attribute 
of  aged  females.  But  with  men  the  case  is  different.  Though 
women  may  still  be  often  influenced  in  their  amorous  choice  by  a 
beard,  it  is  not,  as  just  pointed  out,  on  aesthetic  grounds ;  and  it 
is  indeed  very  dubious  if  the  beard  can  be  accepted  as  a  real  per- 


490  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

sonal  ornament.  True,  the  ancient  Greeks  respected  a  beard  as  an 
attribute  of  maturity  and  manhood,  but  their  ideal  of  supreme 
beauty  was  nevertheless  an  unbearded  youth  :  Apollo  has  neither 
beard  nor  moustache.  The  ancient  Egyptians  had  a  horror  of  the 
bearded  and  long-haired  Greek&.  "  No  Egyptian  of  either  sex 
would  on  any  account  kiss  the  lips  of  a  Greek,"  and  whenever  the 
Egyptians  "  intended  to  convey  the  idea  of  a  man  of  low  condition, 
or  a  slovenly  person,  the  artists  represented  him  with  a  beard " 
(Wilkinson).  Similarly,  in  the  second  edition  of  his  Anatomy  of 
Expression  (1824),  Sir  Charles  Bell  wrote  that  "When  those 
essays  were  first  written  there  was  not  a  beard  to  be  seen  in 
England  unless  joined  with  squalor  and  neglect,  and  I  had  the 
conviction  that  this  appendage  concealed  the  finest  features.  Being 
in  Rome,  however,  during  the  procession  of  the  Corpus  Domini,  I 
saw  that  the  expression  was  not  injured  by  the  beard,  but  that  it 
added  to  the  dignity  and  character  of  years." 

These  two  sentences  contain  the  whole  philosophy  of  beards. 
The  expression  of  character  is  not  injured,  but  rather  increased  by 
a  beard ;  but  if  it  conceals  the  fine  features  of  youth  it  is  objec: 
tionable.  There  are  men  whose  faces  are  too  wide,  and  whose 
appearance  is  therefore  improved  by  a  chin-beard ;  and  there  are 
others  whose  faces  are  too  narrow,  and  who  consequently  look 
better  with  side-whiskers.  But  in  a  well-shaped  youthful  mascu- 
line face  a  beard  is  as  great  a  superfluity,  if  not  a  blemish,  as  in  a 
woman's  face. 

Now,  since  the  faces  of  civilised  races  are  undoubtedly  becoming 
more  beautiful  as  time  advances,  it  is  comforting  to  know  that, 
notwithstanding  female  selection,  the  beard  is  gradually  disappear- 
ing. Very  few  men  are  able  to  raise  a  fine  beard  to-day,  even 
with  the  artificial  stimulus  of  several  years'  daily  shaving ;  and  the 
time,  no  doubt,  is  not  very  distant  when  men  will  go  to  the  cos- 
metic electrician  to  have  their  straggling  hairbulbs  in  the  chin 
killed.  This  may  produce  an  inherited  effect  on  their  children ; 
and  the  always  smooth-faced  mother,  too,  cannot  but  exert  some 
hereditary  influence  on  her  sons  as  well  as  her  daughters.  The 
women,  in  turn,  will  inherit  some  of  the  superior  aesthetic  Taste  of 
the  men,  and  begin  to  see  that  there  is  more  charm  in  a  smooth 
than  in  a  bearded  face ;  while  there  will  still  be  room  enough  for 
those  sexual  differences  in  facial  Beauty  which  feed  the  flame  of 
Love. 

The  following  newspaper  paragraph,  though  it  may  be  a  mere 
jeu  cFesprit,  is  amusing  and  suggestive :  "  A  Frenchman  sent  a 
circular  to  all  his  friends  asking  why  they  cultivated  a  beard. 


THE  HAIR  491 

Among  the  answers  9  stated,  '  Because  I  wish  to  avoid  shaving ' ; 
1 2  *  Because  I  do  not  wish  to  catch  cold ' ;  5  '  Because  I  wish  to 
conceal  bad  teeth ' ;  '  Because  I  wish  to  conceal  the  length  of  my 
nose';  6  'Because  I  am  a  soldier';  21  '  Because  I  was  a  soldier'; 
65  'Because  my  wife  likes  it';  28  'Because  my  love  likes  it';  15 
answered  that  they  wore  no  beards." 

Moustaches  are  much  more  common  to-day  than  beards,  and  it 
is  barely  possible  that  they  may  escape  aesthetic  condemnation,  and 
survive  to  the  millennium.  Persons  with  very  short  upper  lips  or 
flat  noses,  it  is  true,  only  emphasise  their  shortcomings  by  wearing 
a  moustache ;  but  in  broad  faces  with  prominent  noses  a  well- 
shaped,  not  too  drooping,  moustache  is  no  doubt  an  ornament,  re- 
lieving the  gravity  of  the  masculine  features  and  adding  to  their 
expression.  As  Bell  remarks  :  "  Although  the  hair  of  the  upper 
lip  does  conceal  the  finer  modulations  of  the  mouth,  as  in  woman, 
it  adds  to  the  character  of  the  stronger  and  harsher  emotions." 
"I  was  led  to  attend  more  particularly  to  the  moustache  as  a 
feature  of  expression,"  he  says,  "in  meeting  a  handsome  young  French 
soldier  coming  up  a  long  ascent  in  the  Cote  d'Or,  and  breathing 
hard,  although  with  a  good-humoured,  innocent  expression.  His 
sharp-pointed  black  moustache  rose  and  fell  with  a  catamount  look 
that  set  me  to  think  on  the  cause." 

Young  men  may  find  in  Bell's  remarks  a  suggestion  as  to  how  they 
may  make  the  moustache  a  permanent  ornament  of  the  human  race. 
The  movements  of  the  moustache  are  dependent  on  the  muscle  called 
depressor  alee  nasi.  By  specially  cultivating  this  muscle  men 
might  in  course  of  time  make  the  movements  of  the  moustaches 
subject  to  voluntary  control.  Just  think  what  a  capacity  for 
emotional  expression  lies  in  such  a  simple  organ  as  the  dog's  caudal 
appendage,  aptly  called  the  "  psychographic  tail "  by  Vischer :  and 
moustaches  are  double,  and  therefore  equal  to  two  psychographic 
appendages ! 

Sexual  Selection  would  not  fail  to  seize  on  this  "new  departure" 
in  moustaches  immediately  in  order  to  emphasise  the  sexual  dif- 
ferences of  expression  in  the  face,  and  thus  increase  the  ardour  of 
romantic  passion.  A  few  days  ago  I  came  across  an  attempt  in  a 
German  paper  to  explain  the  meaning  of  the  word  Flirtation.  The 
writer  derives  the  word  from  an  old  expression  meaning  to  toss  or 
cast  about.  This  he  refers  to  the  eyes,  and  thinks  that  the  proper 
translation  of  Flirtation  is  augeln,  i.e.  to  "  make  eyes."  We,  of 
course,  know  that  flirting  is  a  fine  art  which  includes  a  vast  deal 
besides  dugeln  ;  but  "  making  eyes  "  is  certainly  one  of  its  tricks. 
Now,  is  it  not  probable  that  by  and  by,  when  young  men  will  have 


492  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

properly  trained  their  depressor  aloe  nasi,  they  will  look  upon  the 
making  of  eyes  as  a  feminine  attribute,  and,  instead  of  winking  at 
their  sweethearts,  express  their  admiration  by  some  subtle  and 
graceful  movement  of  the  moustaches'?  This  would  obliterate 
Darwin's  assertion  that  Love  has  no  special  means  of  expression, 

BALDNESS   AND   DEPILATORIES 

Superficial  students  of  Darwinism  are  constantly  making  owlish 
predictions  that  ere  many  generations  will  have  passed  bald  heads 
will  be  the  normal  aspect  of  man.  But,  as  we  have  just  seen  in 
the  case  of  beards,  it  is  not  utility  or  Natural  Selection  so  much 
as  Sexual,  JSsthetico-Amorous  Selection  on  which  the  evolution  of 
Persona]  Beauty  depends.  If  Natural  Selection  were  at  work  alone 
we  should,  indeed,  ultimately  become  bald;  for  as  soon  as  man 
begins  to  cover  his  head  with  a  cap  or  hat,  he  takes  away  the  chief 
function  of  the  hair  on  the  top  of  the  head,  where  it  serves  as  a 
protection  against  wind  and  weather.  But  Sexual  Selection  now 
steps  in  and  says  that  the  hair  must  remain,  because  without  it  the. 
head  looks  decidedly  ugly,  whatever  its  shape. 

"  Eschricht  states  that  in  the  human  foetus  the  hair  on  the  face 
during  the  fifth  month  is  longer  than  that  on  the  head ;  and  this 
indicates  that  our  semi-human  progenitors  were  not  furnished  with 
long  tresses,  which  must  therefore  have  been  a  late  acquisition. 
This  is  likewise  indicated  by  the  extraordinary  difference  in  the 
length  of  the  hair  in  the  different  races :  in  the  negro  the  hair 
forms  a  mere  curly  mat ;  with  us  it  is  of  great  length,  and  with 
the  American  natives  it  not  rarely  reaches  to  the  ground.  Some 
species  of  Semnopithecus  have  their  head  covered  with  moderately 
long  hair,  and  this  probably  serves  as  an  ornament,  and  was  ac- 
quired through  sexual  selection.  The  same  view  may  perhaps  be 
extended  to  mankind,  for  we  know  that  long  tresses  are  now  and 
were  formerly  much  admired,  as  may  be  observed  in  the  works  of 
almost  every  poet ;  St.  Paul  says,  *  If  a  woman  have  long  hair  it 
is  a  glory  to  her ; '  and  we  have  seen  that  in  North  America  a 
chief  was  elected  solely  from  the  length  of  his  hair  "  (Darwin). 

Inasmuch  as  Sexual  Selection  or  Love  is  impeded  in  its  action 
not  only  by  pecuniary  and  social  considerations,  but  by  the  fact 
that  it  cannot  be  guided  by  any  particular  feature  alone,  its  action 
is  slow  and  sometimes  uncertain.  Hence  the  increase  of  bald 
heads.  It  is  therefore  necessary  to  supplement  the  beautifying 
results  of  Sexual  Selection  by  means  of  hygienic  precautions,  such 
as  avoiding  air-tight,  warm,  high  hats,  badly  ventilated  rooms, 


THE  HAIR  493 

intemperate  habits,  and  other  causes  of  baldness.  Hereditary 
baldness  is  difficult  to  arrest  in  its  course ;  but  even  in  such  cases 
much  may  be  accomplished  by  beginning  in  childhood  to  take 
proper  care  <tf  the  hair.  Most  persons — especially  men — seem  to 
imagine  that  combs  and  brushes  are  made  solely  for  the  purpose 
of  arranging  the  hair  in  some  approved  fashion ;  whereas,  if  pro- 
perly used,  a  brush  adds  as  mu?h  to  the  sensuous  beauty  of  the 
hair  as  to  its  formal  appearance.  To  remove  all  the  dust  from 
the  hair,  and  give  it  gloss  and  healthy  colour,  about  fifty  daily 
strokes,  or  more  even,  are  recommended.  Avoid  irritating  the 
scalp  with  fine  combs  or  hard  bristles,  and  wash  it  once  or  twice 
a  week  with  a  weak  solution  of  ammonia  or  borax.  Hair  that  is 
properly  brushed  is  always  glossy  with  its  natural  oil,  and  needs 
no  vulgar  ointment,  offensive  to  the  smell  and  suggestive  of  uu- 
cleanliness.  If  with  these  hygienic  precautions  the  hair  refuses  to 
become  beautiful,  it  is  time  to  get  medical  advice;  for  the  dull 
colour  and  dryness  of  the  hair  which  lead  to  baldness  are  often 
due  to  constitutional  disease. 

Powdering  the  hair  is  fortunately  no  longer  in  vogue  as  it  was 
formerly.  It  is  a  most  unsesthetic  habit,  not  only  because  white 
or  giay  hair  is  naturally  suggestive  of  old  age,  grief,  and  decrepi- 
tude, but  because  the  flour  forms  with  the  perspiration  and  witn 
the  oil  of  the  hair  a  nasty  compound.  William  Pitt  "estimated, 
in  1795,  that  the  amount  of  flour  annually  consumed  for  this 
purpose  in  the  United  Kingdom  represented  the  enormous  and 
incredible  value  of  six  million  dollars." 

It  is  estimated  that  the  average  number  of  hairs  on  the  head 
is  120,000.  This  allows  one  to  look  with  considerable  indifference 
on  the  loss  of  a  few  hundred,  all  the  more  as  in  ordinary  cases, 
even  after  illness,  every  hair  lost  is  replaced  by  another.  But 
when  the  papilla  at  the  base  of  the  hair  cavity  is  destroyed,  then 
baldness  is  inevitable.  It  follows  from  this  that  the  only  certain 
way  of  removing  hair  permanently  from  places  where  it  is  not 
desired  is  to  destroy  this  papilla.  "Plucking  hair  out  by  the 
root"  does  not  destroy  it.  "If  they  are  pulled  out  with  the 
tweezers  there  is  a  still  greater  stimulus  given,"  says  Dr.  Bulkley 
(The  Skin  in  Health  and  Disease),  "and  the  hairs  return  yet 
more  coarse  and  obtrusive."  The  various  Oriental  and  Occidental 
pastes  for  removing  the  hair  have  no  more  permanent  effect  than 
shaving.  "Superfluous  hairs  can  be  removed  either  by  the  in- 
troduction of  an  irregularly-shaped  needle  into  the  follicle  (after 
the  extraction  of  the  hair),  which  is  then  twisted  so  as  to  break 
up  the  papilla  and  produce  a  little  inflammation,  which  closes  the 


494  KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

follicle ;  or  a  needle  can  be  inserted,  and  a  current  from  a  battery 
be  turned  on,  when  the  follicle  is  destroyed  by  what  is  known  as 
electrolysis.  These  procedures  could  be  done  only  by  a  physician." 
Concerning  electrolysis  Dr.  S.  E.  Woody  says  in  the  American 
Practitioner  and  News  that  the  number  of  hairs  to  return  and 
demand  a  second  removal  will  decrease  with  the  skill  of  the 
operator  and  the  thoroughness  of  the  operation.  He  usually 
expects  the  return  of  about  5  per  cent,  but  when  these  are  in 
turn  removed  the  cure  is  complete.  "  You  should  have  the  patient 
come  only  on  bright  days,  for  good  light  is  necessary." 

ESTHETIC  VALUE   OF   HAIR 

If  not  the  most  beautiful  part  of  the  head,  hair  certainly  is  the 
most  beautifying.  To  improve  the  shape  of  mouth,  nose,  chin,  or 
eyes  requires  time  and  patience,  but  the  arrangement  of  the  hair 
can  be  altered  in  a  minute,  not  only  to  its  own  advantage,  but  so 
as  to  enhance  the  beauty  of  the  whole  face.  By  clever  manipula- 
tion of  her  long  tresses,  a  woman  can  alter  her  appearance  almost 
as  completely  as  a  man  can  by  shaving  off  his  long  beard  or 
moustache. 

But,  alas!  If  the  prevalence  of  the  bustle  and  wasp-waist 
allowed  any  doubt  to  remain  as  to  the  woful  rarity  of  aesthetic 
taste  among  women,  it  would  be  found  in  the  arrangement  of  the 
hair  and  the  kind  of  head-dresses  they  commonly  adopt  at  the 
behest  of  Fashion.  "  Because  women  as  a  rule  do  not  know  what 
beauty  means,"  says  Mrs.  Haweis  (The  Art  of  Beauty),  "therefore 
they  catch  at  whatever  presents  itself  as  a  novelty.  .  .  .  They  do 
not  pause  to  consider  whether  the  old  fashion  became  them  better 
— whether  the  new  one  reveals  more  clearly  the  slight  shrinking 
of  the  jaw,  or  spoils  the  pretty  colour  still  blooming  in  the 
cheek." 

The  latest  head-dress  foisted  on  the  feminine  world  by  Parisian 
Fashion  shows  most  strikingly  how  Fashion  is  the  Handmaid  of 
Vulgarity  as  well  as  of  Ugliness.  Heaven  knows,  the  high  silk 
hats  worn  by  men  are  bad  enough,  on  hygienic  as  well  as  aesthetic 
grounds.  They  promote  baldness  and  destroy  all  the  artistic  pro- 
portions of  stature,  making  the  head  look  by  one  half  too  high. 
But  silk  hats  are  a  harmless  trifle  compared  with  the  shapeless 
straw-towers,  ornamented  with  bird-corpses,  that  have  been  worn 
of  late  by  almost  all  women  in  countries  which  slavishly  follow 
Parisian  example.  And  there  is  this  great  difference  between 
man's  silk  hat  and  woman's  bird-sarcophagus — the  former  only 


THE  HAIR  495 

results  in  ugliness,  the  second  is  also  evidence  of  heartlessness, 
and  leads  to  vulgarity.  For  what  is  it  but  vulgarity  if  women 
continue  to  go  to  the  theatre  for  two  winters  with  hats  which 
make  it  quite  impossible  for  those  sitting  behind  them  to  see  the 
scenery  and  enjoy  the  play — and  all  this  in  spite  of  innumerable 
sarcastic  and  angry  protests  in  the  journals  ?  Is  not  the  first  rule 
of  etiquette  and  good  manners  regard  for  the  feelings  and  pleasures 
of  others  ? 

What  would  women  say  to  a  man  who  kept  on  his  tall  hat  in 
a  theatre  until  the  ushers  threw  him  out  ?  Would  they  not  all 
pronounce  him  either  intoxicated  or  ineffably  vulgar  ?  Would  not 
Schopenhauer,  if  he  could  go  to  an  American  theatre  to-day,  be 
justified  in  saying  that  women  are  not  only  the  "  unsesthetic  sex," 
but  also  the  "ill-bred  sex"?  And  can  the  women  who  are  so 
devoid  of  courtesy  towards  the  men  wonder  that  masculine  gallantry 
towards  women  on  street-cars  and  elsewhere  seems  to  be  on  the 
wane? 

Although  there  are  no  two  heads  in  which  the  most  pleasing 
effect  is  secured  by  precisely  the  same  arrangement  of  the  hair 
and  the  same  style  of  hat,  it  may  be  laid  down  as  a  universal  rule 
that  a  very  high  hat  or  arrangement  of  the  hair  is  becoming  to  no 
one,  for  the  reason  above  indicated.  Let  it  be  observed,  says  Mr. 
Kuskin,  "that  in  spite  of  all  custom,  an  Englishman  instantly 
acknowledges,  and  at  first  sight,  the  superiority  of  the  turban  to 
the  hat"  "Guido,"  says  Mrs.  Haweis,  "probably  felt  the 
peculiar  charm  of  the  turban  when  he  placed  one  upon  the  quiet 
melancholy  head  of  Beatrice  Cenci."  For  full  and  bright  young 
faces  the  Tarn  o'  Shanter  is  the  loveliest  of  all  head-dresses.  But 
this  subject  is  too  large  to  be  discussed  in  a  paragraph.  In  Mrs. 
Haweis's  Art  of  Beauty  may  be  found  some  elegant  illustrations 
of  head-dresses  placed  near  fashionable  monstrosities ;  and  young 
ladies  would  do  well  to  devote  an  hour  a  day  for  a  year  or  two  to 
the  study  of  some  history  of  costume.  Nothing  awakens  the  sense 
of  Beauty  so  rapidly  as  good  models  and  comparisons. 

Concerning  the  arrangement  of  the  hair  two  more  points  may 
be  noted.  Is  it  not  about  time  to  do  away  with  the  venerable 
absurdity  of  parting  the  hair  ?  If  entire  baldness  is  voted  ugly, 
why  should  partial  baldness  be  courted?  The  hair  should  be 
allowed  to  remain  in  its  natural  direction  of  growth.  It  does  not 
part  itself  naturally,  nor  again — and  this  is  a  much  more  im- 
portant point — does  it  grow  backward  from  the  forehead.  The 
Chinese  coiffure  disfigures  every  woman  who  adopts  it ;  and  the 
habit  of  combing  back  the  hair  tightly  from  the  forehead,  more- 


496  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

over,  often  causes  neuralgic  headache,  the  cause  of  which  is  un- 
suspected ;  not  to  speak  of  the  fact  that  such  a  coiffure  raises  the 
eyebrows,  and  thus  gives  a  fixed  expression  of  amazed  stupefac- 
tion. The  hair  naturally  falls  over  the  forehead,  and  fringes  it  as 
beautifully  as  a  grove  does  a  lake. 

The  ancient  Greek  notions  on  this  subject  are  worthy  of  atten- 
tive consideration.  "Women  who  had  a  high  forehead  placed  a 
band  over  it,  with  the  design  of  making  it  thereby  seem  lower," 
says  Winckelmann.  Not  only  in  women  but  in  mature  men  the 
hair  was  so  arranged  as  to  cover  up  "  the  receding  bare  corners 
over  the  temples,  which  usually  enlarge  as  life  advances  beyond 
that  age  when  the  forehead  is  naturally  high."  The  modern 
fringe  or  "bang"  is,  however,  an  improvement  even  on  the  Greek 
curve  of  the  hair  over  the  temples.  It  improves  the  appearance 
of  all  women  except  those  whose  forehead  is  very  low  naturally ; 
but  in  all  cases  exaggeration  must  be  avoided. 

A  writer  in  the  London  Evening  Standard  thinks  it  is  strange 
that  the  English,  "  who  have  the  poorest  hair  in  Europe,  make 
the  least  attempt  to  show  what  they  have,"  and  that  it  has  now. 
"  come  to  such  a  pass  that  a  maiden  of  twenty  thinks  it  almost 
indecent  to  wear  her  hair  loose."  He  traces  this  to  the  tyranny 
of  Fashion — the  ugly  majority  having  compelled  the  beautiful 
minority  to  conceal  their  charms.  But  we  may  be  sure  that  ere 
long  Beauty  will  revolt  against  Fashion.  It  will  be  another  French 
revolution,  practically, — an  emphatic  protest  against  Parisian 
dictation  and  vulgarity. 


BRUNETTE  AND  BLONDE 

"  In  the  old  time  black  was  not  counted  fair, 
Or  if  it  were  it  bore  not  beauty's  name  ; 
Eut  now  is  black  beauty'' s  successive  heir." — SHAKSPEEE. 

BLONDE    VERSUS  BRUNETTE 

Becker  tells  us  that  among  the  ancient  Greeks  "black  was 
probably  the  prevailing  colour  of  the  hair,  though  blond  is 
frequently  mentioned " ;  and  he  adds  that  both  men  and  women 
used  dyes,  and  "the  blond  or  yellow  hair  was  much  admired." 
Mr.  Gladstone,  in  his  work  on  Homer,  remarks  that  "  dark  hair  is 
a  note  of  the  foreigner  and  of  Southern  extraction.  ...  I  have 
been  assured  that,  in  the  Greece  of  to-day,  light  hair  is  still  held 
as  indicating  the  purest  Hellenic  blood."  According  to  Winckel- 
mann,  "  Homer  does  not  even  once  mention  hair  of  a  black  colour" ; 


BRUNETTE  AXD  BLONDE  497 

and  again :  "  Flaxen,  £av6r)  hair  has  always  been  considered  the 
most  beautiful ;  and  hair  of  this  colour  has  been  attributed  to  the 
most  beautiful  of  the  gods,  as  Apollo  and  Bacchus,  not  less  than 
to  the  heroes  ;  even  Alexander  had  flaxen  hair." 

That  the  Romans  agreed  with  the  Greeks  in  giving  the  pre- 
ference to  light  hair  seems  probable  from  the  extensive  importations 
of  yellow  German  hair  for  the  Roman  ladies,  as  also  from  the  fact 
that  "  Lucretius,  when  speaking  of  the  false  flatteries  addressed  to 
women,  quotes  one  in  illustration,  namely,  that  a  maiden  with 
black  hair  is  /xeAi'x/ooos  (honey-coloured) — thus  ascribing  to  her  a 
beauty  which  she  does  not  possess." 

When  the  fair-haired  Teuton  overran  the  South  a  new  motive 
for  preferring  blond  hair  arose,  as  a  writer  in  the  London  Standard 
remarks :  "  Whatever  the  feeling  of  the  men,  we  may  be  sure  that 
the  dark  beauties  of  those  climes  felt  a  natural  inclination  to 
resemble  the  wives  and  daughters  of  the  conqueror,  and  when  we 
perceive  their  likenesses  again,  at  the  revival  of  art  in  Italy,  not  a 
black  tress  is  to  be  seen.  Is  there  a  single  Madonna  not  blond  ? 
— or  ten  portraits  of  women  by  the  great  masters  1  In  all  the 
gallery  of  Titian,  we  think  only  of  a  figure,  naked  to  the  waist,  in 
the  Uifizi,  described  as  one  of  his  mistresses.  .  .  .  But  we  know 
that  the  blond  tint  was  artificial  in  a  majority  of  cases — the  deep 
black  of  eye  and  brow  would  show  it  if  no  evidence  were  forth- 
coming. But  evidence  turns  up  at  every  side  ...  a  hundred 
recipes  are  found  in  memoirs,  correspondence,  and  treatises  of  the 
time." 

Hear  another  witness  :  "  Southern  Europe,"  says  Mr.  R  G. 
White,  "  is  peopled  with  dark-skinned,  dark-haired  races,  and  the 
superior  beauty  of  the  blond  type  was  recognised  by  the  painters, 
who  always,  from  the  earliest  days,  represented  angels  as  of  that 
type.  The  Devil  was  painted  black  so  much  as  a  matter  of  course 
that  his  pictured  appearance  gave  rise  to  a  well-known  proverb ; 
ordinary  mortals  were  represented  as  more  or  less  dark ;  celestial 
people  were  white  and  golden-haired  :  whence  the  epithet  '  divinely 
fair.' " 

And  the  poets  were  quite  as  partial  as  the  artists  to  the  light 
type.  Petrarch's  sonnets  are  addressed  to  a  blue -eyed  Laura. 
Krimhild  of  the  Nibelungenlied  is  blue -eyed,  like  Fricka,  the 
Northern  Juno,  and  Ingeborg  of  the  Frithjofs  Say  a,  and  the 
Danish  princess  lolanthe,  as  Dr.  Magnus  points  out ;  and  in  the 
French  folk-songs  "  the  girls  are  almost  as  invariably  blond  as  in 
the  songs  of  Heine,"  as  a  writer  in  the  Saturday  Review  (1878) 
remarks,  adding  that  "  there  is  even  such  an  expression  as  oiler  en 

2K 


498  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

blonde,   'to  go  a- wooing,'  which  proves  the  universality  of  the 
belief  in  fair  beauties." 

Concerning  England,  a  writer  in  the  Quarterly  Review  declares 
that  Shakspere  mentions  black  hair  only  twice  throughout  his 
plays ;  and  that  in  the  National  Gallery  of  that  date  (1853)  there 
was  not  a  single  female  head  with  black  hair. 


BRUNETTE    VERSUS  BLONDE 

Thus  we  have  evidence  showing  that  during  the  epoch  preceding 
the  general  prevalence  of  Romantic  Love,  the  blond  type  was  con- 
sidered the  ideal  of  beauty  throughout  Europe — in  Greece  and 
Italy  as  well  as  in  Germany,  Scandinavia,  France,  and  England. 
Aud  where  the  hair  was  not  naturally  blond,  artificial  means  were 
used  to  make  it  so. 

But  as  soon  as  Love  appears  on  the  scene  and  sharpens  the 
aesthetic  sense,  we  find  a  reaction  in  favour  of  brunettes.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  of  this,  for  it  is  attested  not  only  by  personal 
opinions  and  observations,  but  by  accurate  statistics.  The 
Quarterly  Review  just  referred  to  believed  that  blondes  were 
gradually  decreasing  in  England,  and  the  Saturday  Review  asserts 
that  "some  years  ago  Mr.  Gladstone,  whom  nothing  escapes, 
declared  that  light-haired  people  were  far  less  numerous  than  in 
his  youth.  Many  middle-aged  persons  will  probably  agree  with 
him."  "  The  time  was,"  the  writer  adds,  "  when  the  black-haired, 
black-eyed  girl  of  fiction  was  as  dark  of  soul  as  of  tresses,  while 
the  blue-eyed  maiden's  character  was  of  '  heaven's  own  colour.' 
Thackeray  damaged  this  tradition  by  invariably  making  his  dark 
heroines  nice,  his  fair  heroines  treacherous  sirens."  Byron,  we 
may  add,  also  showed  a  passionate  preference  for  brunettes ;  and 
does  not  another  great  love-poet,  Moore,  speak  of  "  eyes  of  unholy 
blue"? 

Speaking  of  the  Germans,  the  anthropologist  Waltz  remarks 
that  "  the  blond  and  red  hair,  the  blue  eyes  and  light  complexion, 
which  most  of  them  had  at  the  period  of  the  Roman  wars,  have 
not  disappeared,  it  is  true,  but  certainly  diminished  greatly  in 
frequency.  In  Jarrold  we  find  the  analogous  statement  that  as 
late  as  the  time  of  Henry  VIII.  red  hair  predominated  in  England, 
and  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century  gray  eyes  were 
more  common,  dark  eyes  and  dark  hair  less  common,  than  now." 
As  this  change  is  correlated  in  both  these  countries  with  a  gradual 
refinement  of  the  features,  does  it  not  indicate  that  modern 
eesthetico-amorous  selection  favours  the  brunette  type  1 


BRUNETTE  AND  BLONDE  499 

Waltz's  assertion  regarding  the  gradual  decrease  in  the  numbei 
of  blondes  in  Germany  is  strikingly  confirmed  by  the  results  of  a 
series  of  statistical  investigations  undertaken  under  the  supervision 
of  Professor  Virchow.  Almost  eleven  million  school  children  were 
examined  in  Germany,  Austria,  Switzerland,  and  Belgium,  and  the 
results  showed  that  Switzerland  has  only  11*10,  Austria  19-79, 
and  Germany  31 '80  per  cent  of  pure  blondes.  Thus  the  very 
country  which,  since  the  days  of  ancient  Rome  has  been  proverbi- 
ally known  as  the  home  of  yellow  hair  and  blue  eyes,  has  to-day 
only  32  pure  blondes  in  a  hundred;  while  the  average  of  pure 
brunettes  is  already  14*05  per  cent  (and  in  some  regions  as  high  as 
25  per  cent).  The  53*15  per  cent  of  the  mixed  type  are  evidently 
being  slowly  transformed  into  pure  brunettes,  thanks  to  inter- 
marriages with  the  neighbours  who  are  of  the  dark  variety  east  and 
west,  as  well  as  south  of  Germany. 

In  England  Dr.  Beddoe  has  collected  a  number  of  statistics 
which  also  bear  out  the  theory  that  brunettes  are  gaining  on 
blondes.  Among  726  women  examined  he  found  369  brunettes 
and  357  blondes.  Of  the  brunettes  he  found  that  78*5  per  cent 
were  married,  while  of  the  blondes  only  68  per  cent  were  married. 
Thus  it  would  seem  that  a  brunette  has  ten  chances  of  getting 
married  in  England  to  a  blonde's  nine.  Hence  Dr.  Beddoe  reasons 
that  the  English  are  becoming  darker  because  the  men  persist  in 
selecting  the  darker-haired  women  as  wives. 

In  France  a  similar  view  has  been  put  forth  by  M.  Adolphe  de 
Candolle  in  the  Archives  des  Sciences.  He  found  that  when  both 
parents  have  eyes  of  the  same  colour  88 -4  per  cent  inherit  this 
colour.  "  But  the  curious  fact  comes  out  that  more  females  than 
males  have  black  or  brown  eyes,  in  the  proportion,  say,  of  49  to  45 
or  of  41  to  39.  Next,  it  appears  that  with  different  coloured 
eyes  in  the  two  parents,  53-09  per  cent  of  the  progeny  followed 
the  fathers  in  being  dark-eyed,  and  5  5 '09  per  cent  followed  their 
mothers  in  being  dark-syed.  An  increase  of  5  per  cent  of  dark- 
eyed  in  each  generation  of  discolorous  unions  must  tell  heavily  in 
the  course  of  time.  It  would  seem,"  adds  Science,  to  which  I  owe 
this  summary  of  De  Candolle's  views,  "  that,  unless  specially  bred 
by  concolorous  marriages,  blue-eyed  belles  will  be  scarce  in  the 
millennium." 

WHY   CUPID   FAVOUBS  BRUNETTES 

How  are  we  to  account  for  this  undeniable  change  in  favour  of 
brunettes  ?  Is  it  merely  a  matter  of  Taste  and  Fashion  ?  Are  we 
Bunply  going  through  a  period  of  brunette-worship  which  in  turn 


500  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

will  be  followed  by  a  century  or  two  of  blonde-worship,  and  so  on 
ad  infinitum  ?  or  are  there  reasons  for  believing  that  Cupid  will 
abide  by  his  present  decision,  and  continue  to  eliminate  blondes  1 
There  are  several  such  reasons,  which  may  best  be  discussed  sepa- 
rately, under  the  heads  of  Complexion,  Hair,  and  Eyes. 

(1)  Complexion. — The  dark  skin  is  more  soft  and  velvety  than 
the  light  skin,  and  therefore  more  agreeable  to  the  touch ;  hence, 
as  Winckelmann  remarks,  "  he  who  prefers  dark  to  fair  beauty  is 
not  on  that  account  to  be  censured ;  indeed,  one  might  approve  his 
choice,  if  he  is  attracted  less  by  sight  than  by  the  touch."  But 
the  eye,  too,  is  likely  to  be  more  pleased  by  a  brunette  than  a  pure 
blond  complexion.  In  the  dark  skin  the  pigmentary  matter  tones 
down  the  too  vivid  red  of  the  translucent  blood,  wherefore  the 
brunette  complexion  appears  more  mellow  and  delicate  in  its  tints 
than  the  Scandinavian  blonde,  in  which  a  blush  suggests  a  hectic 
flush,  and  its  normal  whiteness  the  pallor  of  ill-health  or  a  lack  of 
invigorating  and  beautifying  sunshine. 

The  brunette  complexion,  in  a  word,  suggests  to  the  mind  the 
idea  of  stored- up  sunshine,  i.e.  Health;  and  as  Health  is  what 
primarily  attracts  Cupid,  this,  combined  with  his  taste  for  delicate 
tints  and  veiled  blushes,  partly  accounts  for  his  preference  of  the 
dark  type.  Youthful  freshness  is  another  bait  which  tempts 
Cupid ;  and  it  is  well  known  that  the  dark  complexion  does  not, 
as  a  rule,  fade  so  soon  as  the  blond. 

That  the  brownish  skin  is  commonly  healthier  than  the  white 
is  also  shown  by  its  being  less  subject  to  the  irregularity  in  the 
secretion  of  pigmentary  matter  which  causes  freckles.  These 
blemishes,  like  smallpox  marks,  are  much  rarer  among  the  dark 
than  among  blond  races  and  individuals. 

The  skin  of  blondes  who  are  exposed  to  a  hot  sun  and  raw 
weather  becomes  red,  inflamed,  and  decidedly  unbeautiful,  while  a 
brunette's  complexion  only  becomes  a  shade  darker,  and  possibly 
all  the  more  attractive.  This  suggests  another  reason  why  the 
brunettes  have  an  advantage  over  blondes  in  the  country,  where 
love-making  is  chiefly  carried  on  in  summer.  Yet  it  will  not  do 
for  the  blondes  to  avoid  the  sunshine  on  this  account,  for  that  will 
make  them  anaemic  and  prematurely  old. 

There  is  a  class  of  extreme  blondes  to  whom  sunlight  is  not 
only  irritating,  but  positively  painful.  They  are  called  albinos, 
because  there  is  no  brown  pigment  whatever  in  any  part  of  their 
body — skin,  hair,  or  iris.  The  Dutch  call  them  Kakerlaken  or 
cockroaches,  because,  like  these  animals,  they  avoid  the  light. 
Such  anomalous  individuals  occur  also  among  animals:  and 


BRUNETTE  AND  BLONDE  501 

Darwin  has  noted  regarding  birds  that  albinos  do  not  pair, 
apparently  because  they  are  rejected  by  their  normally -coloured 
comrades.  This  fact  has  a  remote  bearing  on  our  argument,  for 
blondes  are  intermediate  between  albinos  and  brunettes. 

It  would  appear,  indeed,  as  if  not  only  the  complexion  but  the 
general  constitution  of  the  dark  type  were  superior  to  that  of  the 
blond  type.  In  the  chapter  on  the  Complexion  it  was  stated  that 
a  dark  hue  is  regarded  in  Australia  and  elsewhere  as  evidence  of 
superior  strength.  The  ancient  Greeks,  Winckelmann  tells  us, 
although  they  called  the  young  with  fair  complexions  "  children  of 
the  gods,"  looked  upon  a  brown  complexion  in  boys  as  an  indica- 
tion of  courage.  Professor  Topinard  states  that  "  the  fair  races 
are  especially  adapted  to  temperate  and  cool  regions,  and  the 
South  is  looked  upon  as  almost  forbidden  ground.  The  brown 
races,  on  the  contrary,  have  a  remarkable  power  of  becoming 
acclimatised."  Several  writers  have  even  endeavoured  to  account 
for  the  gradual  increase  in  the  proportion  of  brunettes  by  con- 
necting it  with  the  modern  tendency  towards  centralisation  of  the 
population  in  large  cities,  where  the  blondes,  being  unable  to 
resist  their  unsanitary  surroundings,  are  eliminated,  while  the 
more  vigorous  and  fertile  brunettes  survive  and  multiply. 

One  reason  why  tourists  are  more  impressed  by  the  prevalence 
of  beauty  in  southern  than  in  northern  regions,  is  because  the 
working  classes  are  more  beautiful  in  the  South  than  in  the 
North;  and  the  working  classes,  of  course,  constitute  the  vast 
majority  of  the  population  everywhere.  "  In  northern  countries," 
says  Mr.  Lecky,  "  the  prevailing  cast  of  beauty  depends  rather  on 
colour  than  on  form.  It  consists  chiefly  of  a  freshness  and 
delicacy  of  complexion  which  severe  labour  and  constant  exposure 
necessarily  destroy,  and  which  is  therefore  rarely  found  in  the 
highest  perfection  among  the  very  poor.  But  the  southern  type 
is  essentially  democratic.  The  fierce  rays  of  the  sun  only  mellow 
and  mature  its  charms.  Its  most  perfect  examples  may  be  found  in 
the  hovel  as  in  the  palace,  and  the  effects  of  this  diffusion  of  beauty 
may  be  traced  both  in  the  manners  and  the  morals  of  the  people." 

Another  advantage  to  the  study  and  development  of  Personal 
Beauty  lies  in  the  fact,  noted  by  Ruskin,  "  that  in  climates  where 
the  body  can  be  more  openly  and  frequently  visited  by  sun  and 
weather,  the  nude  both  comes  to  be  regarded  in  a  way  more 
grand  and  pure,  as  not  of  necessity  awakening  ideas  of  base  kind 
(as  pre-eminently  with  the  Greeks),  and  also  from  that  exposure 
receives  a  firmness  and  sunny  elasticity  very  different  from  the 
silky  softness  of  the  clothed  nations  of  the  North." 


502  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

(2)  Hair. — "That  noble  beauty,"  says  Winckelmann,  " which 
consists  not  merely  in  a  soft  skin,  a  brilliant  complexion,  wanton  or 
languishing  eyes,  but  in  the  shape  or  form,  is  found  more  frequently 
in  countries  which  enjoy  a  uniform  mildness  of  climate."  "  This 
difference  shows  itself  even  in  the  hair  of  the  head  and  of  the 
beard,  and  both  in  warm  climates  have  a  more  beautiful  growth 
even  from  childhood,  so  that  the  greater  number  of  children  in 
Italy  are  born  with  fine  curling  hair,  which  loses  none  of  its 
beauty  with  increasing  years.  All  the  beards,  also,  are  curly, 
ample,  and  finely  shaped  ;  whereas  those  of  the  pilgrims  who  come 
to  Rome  from  the  other  side  of  the  Alps  are  generally,  like  the 
hair  of  their  heads,  stiff,  bristly,  straight,  and  pointed." 

Nevertheless,  the  hair  is  the  blonde's  one  feature  in  which,  so 
far  as  the  head  itself  is  concerned,  she  may  dispute  the  supremacy 
with  the  brunette.  Light  hair  is  finer  than  dark  hair,  and  there 
is  more  of  it  to  the  square  inch ;  and  as  for  the  colour,  who  will 
say  that  a  girl  with  "golden  locks  which  make  such  wanton 
gambols  "  is  inferior  in  beauty  to  one  who  is  "  robed  in  the  long 
night  of  her  deep  hair  "  1 

But  if  the  positive  tests  of  Beauty — Colour,  Lustre,  Smooth- 
ness, Delicacy,  etc. — do  not  permit  us  to  give  the  preference  to 
dark  hair,  it  is  otherwise  when  we  come  to  the  negative  tests.  A 
fine  head  of  blond  hair  may  be  as  beautiful  as  a  head  of  brown 
hair,  but  it  is  not  so  apt  to  be  beautiful ;  it  has  a  tendency  to 
become  "stiff,  bristly,  straight,  and  pointed."  There  are  various 
reasons  for  believing  that  light  hair  as  a  rule  is  not  so  healthy, 
not  so  well-nourished,  as  dark  hair.  Every  reader  must  have 
noticed  among  his  friends  that  the  blondes  are  much  more  likely 
than  the  brunettes  to  complain  of  dry  and  refractory  hairs,  and 
difficulty  in  keeping  them  in  shape. 

"The  end  of  long  hair  is  usually  lighter  in  colour  than  its 
beginning,"  as  Professor  Kollmann  remarks  :  "  at  a  distance  from 
the  skin  the  hairs  lose  their  natural  oil  as  well  as  the  nourishing 
sap  which  comes  from  their  roots."  This  implies  that  the  colour 
of  the  hair  becomes  darker  with  increasing  vigour  and  vitality. 
We  have  seen  that  the  same  is  true  of  the  colour  of  animals  in 
general,  the  healthiest  being  the  most  vividly  coloured,  and  the 
males  commonly  darker  than  the  less  vigorous  females ;  and  as 
for  plants,  who  has  not  noticed  how  easy  it  is  to  trace  the  course 
of  an  invisible  brooklet  in  a  meadow,  not  only  by  the  greater 
luxuriance,  but  the  much  darker  colour  of  the  grass  which  lines  its 
banks  1 

Once  more,  we  know  that  old  age,  great  sorrow,  terror,  head- 


BRUNETTE  AND  BLONDE  503 

aches,  or  insanity,  diminish  the  pigmentary  matter  in  the  hair  and 
make  it  lighter — gray  or  white ;  and  that  by  frequently  brushing 
blond  hair  we  not  only  make  it  more  glossy  and  shapely,  but  at 
the  same  time  darker. 

Red  hair  is  probably  an  abnormal  variety  of  blond  hair,  since 
it  does  not  occur  among  the  darker  races.  It  is  disliked  not  only 
because  it  is  so  often  associated  with  freckles,  but  because  it  is 
commonly  dry,  coarse,  and  bristly.  The  Brahmins  were  forbidden 
to  marry  a  red-haired  woman ;  and  the  populace  of  most  countries, 
confounding  moral  with  aesthetic  impressions,  accuses  red-haired 
people  of  various  shortcomings.  "  Sandy  hair,  when  well  brushed 
and  kept  glossy  with  the  natural  oil  of  the  scalp,  changes  to  a 
warm  golden  tinge.  I  have  seen,"  says  the  author  of  the  Ugly 
Girl  Papers,  "  a  most  obnoxious  head  of  colour  so  changed  by  a 
few  years'  care  that  it  became  the  admiration  of  the  owner's 
friends,  and  coidd  hardly  be  recognised  as  the  withered,  fiery  locks 
once  worn." 

An  American  newspaper  paragraph,  for  the  truthfulness  of 
which  I  cannot  vouch,  recently  stated  that  twenty-one  men  in 
Cincinnati,  who  had  married  red-haired  women,  were  found  to  be 
colour-blind.  A  person  who  is  colour-blind  mistakes  red  for 
black. 

(3)  Eyes. — But  it  is  when  we  leave  the  scalp  that  the 
superiority  of  dark  over  light  hair  becomes  most  manifest.  That 
black  eyelashes  and  eyebrows  are  infinitely  more  beautiful  than 
light-coloured  ones,  is  admitted  without  a  dissentient  voice  j  and 
it  is  needless  to  add  that  brunettes,  whether  gray  or  black-eyed, 
are  almost  certain  to  have  dark  eyelashes,  while  blondes  are 
almost  certain  not  to  have  them.  Hence  the  painting  of  light 
eyelashes  has  been  a  common  artifice  among  all  nations  and  at 
all  times ;  and  Mrs.  Haweis  goes  so  far  as  to  sanction  the  use  of 
nasty  gray  hair  powder  because  it  "  makes  the  eyebrows  and  eye- 
lashes appear  much  darker  than  they  really  are."  I  have,  how- 
ever, seen  black  eyelashes  on  several  young  ladies  who  could 
hardly  be  classed  as  brunettes,  and  who  assured  me  on  their 
conscience  that  they  had  not  dyed  them.  Can  it  be  possible  that 
Sexual  Selection  (i.e.  the  aesthetic  overtone  in  Romantic  Love)  is 
endeavouring  to  evolve  a  type  of  Beauty  in  which  golden  locks 
will  be  allowed  to  remain,  while  the  eyelashes  will  be  changed  to 
black  1  The  only  objection  to  this  surmise  is  that  the  hair  in 
other  parts  of  the  face  (chin  and  upper  lip),  though  rarely  of  the 
same  colour  as  that  on  the  scalp,  is  almost  always  lighter  in  hue. 
But,  whether  or  not  Love  can  accomplish  the  miracle  of  making 


004  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

black  lashes  universal,  the  fact  remains  that  they  are  in  all  cases 
a  thousand  times  more  charming  than  yellow  or  red  lashes,  and 
also  more  apt  to  be  long  and  delicately  curved,  coyly  veiling  the 
mysterious  lustre  and  fire  of  the  iris. 

Concerning  the  iris,  in  turn,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  it  is  most 
beautiful  when  black  (dark  brown),  or  so  deeply  blue  or  violet  as 
to  be  easily  taken  for  black.  This  superiority  of  the  dark  hue  is 
due  partly  to  the  fact  that  a  brown  eye  is  commonly  more  lustrous 
than  a  light  eye,  and  partly  to  the  law  of  contrast ;  for  a  light- 
coloured  iris  obviously  does  not  present  such  a  vivid  contrast  to 
the  white  of  the  eye  as  a  brown  iris,  and  is  therefore  apt  to  seem 
vague,  watery,  and  superficial  in  expression.  The  light  blue  or 
gray  eye  appears  shallow.  All  its  beauty  seems  to  be  on  the 
surface,  whereas  the  "soul-deep  eyes  of  darkest  night"  appear 
unfathomable  through  their  bewitching  glamour. 

What  is  the  etymology  of  the  word  bella  donna?  Was  it 
given  to  the  plant  on  account  of  the  beauty  of  its  cherry-like 
berries  ?  or  was  it  not  rather  chosen  by  some  poet  who  noted  the 
wondrous  effect  of  these  poisonous  berries  in  changing  all  eyes' 
into  black  eyes  by  enlarging  the  pupils,  thus  making  every  donna 
a  bella  donna,  or  ll  beautiful  lady"?  Great,  indeed,  must  be  the 
fascination  of  a  large  pupil,  since  so  many  women  have  braved 
the  danger  to  health,  and  the  certainty  of  impairment  of  vision, 
which  follow  the  use  of  this  poison  as  a  cosmetic. 

It  was  noted  in  an  earlier  part  of  this  volume  that  young  men 
are  led  to  propose  chiefly  in  the  evening,  because  the  twilight 
enlarges  the  pupil,  thus  not  only  beautifying  her  eyes,  but  enab- 
ling him  to  see  his  own  divine  image  reflected  in  them,  proving  his 
Monopoly  of  her  soul.  A  brunette's  dark  eyes  on  such  an  occa- 
sion appear  to  be  all  pupil :  how,  then,  can  you  wonder  that 
brunettes  are  gaming  on  blondes  ? 

However,  let  not  the  blondes  despair.  As  they  become 
scarcer  they  will  for  that  very  reason  be  valued  the  more  as 
curiosities,  and  the  last  of  them,  should  she  fail  to  find  a  husband, 
will  be  able  to  command  a  handsome  salary  in  a  museum  or  as  a 
comic  opera  singer. 

Moreover,  there  is  no  reason  why  physiologists  should  not  ere 
long  discover  the  secret  of  changing  the  tint  of  the  skin,  hair,  and 
iris  to  suit  one's  taste.  All  children  are  born  with  light  eyes,  but 
a  great  many  exchange  them  for  dark  eyes  as  soon  as  they  realise 
their  mistake.  We  also  know  that  ill-health  temporarily  changes 
the  colour  of  the  hair.  According  to  the  Popular  Science  Monthly, 
"  Prentiss  records  a  case  of  a  patient  to  whom  muriate  of  pilo- 


NATIONALITY  AND  BEAUTY  505 

carpine  was  admiuistered  hypodermically,  and  whose  hair  was 
changed  from  light  blond  to  nearly  jet  black,  and  his  eyes  from 
light  blue  to  dark  blue."  The  eating  of  sorghum  is  also  said  to 
favour  the  evolution  of  a  brunette  colour.  But  it  is  to  the  elec- 
tricians that  we  must  look  for  a  harmless  and  efficient  method  of 
stimulating  the  secretion  of  pigmentary  matter  in  the  iris,  skin, 
and  hair.  The  man  who  first  discovers  how  to  change  blondes 
to  brunettes  will  acquire  a  fame  as  great  as  Newton's  or  Shakn- 
pere's,  and  when  he  dies  Cupid  will  appoint  him  his  private 
secretary. 

"John,"  we  can  hear  a  woman  say  to  her  husband  twenty 
years  hence — "  John,  Laura  is  now  five  years  old.  Don't  you 
think  it  is  time  to  send  her  over  to  Dr.  Electrode  1  I  don't  object 
to  her  yellow  hair,  but  I  do  think  her  complexion,  iris,  and 
eyelashes  should  be  made  several  shades  darker.  She  will 
then  stand  a  better  chance  in  the  marriage  -  market  when  she 
gets  older." 

NATIONALITY  AND  BEAUTY 

Beauty,  like  Love,  has  its  national  peculiarities,  based  on 
climate,  customs,  traditions,  mental  and  physical.  As  the  de- 
scription of  all  these  differences  between  the  various  peoples  in 
the  world  would  require  several  volumes  the  size  of  this,  it 
cannot,  of  course,  be  attempted  here  even  roughly.  Nor  is  this 
necessary,  for  most  of  these  national  peculiarities  are  variations 
which  have  more  ethnologic  than  aesthetic  interest.  Many  of 
them  have  been  considered  in  the  preceding  pages  to  illustrate  the 
Evolution  of  Personal  Beauty;  and  something  has  been  said 
episodically  regarding  Greek,  Hebrew,  Georgian,  and  Mediaeval 
Beauty.  Polish  women  are  famous  for  their  beauty,  but  as  I  have 
never  been  in  Poland  nor  in  Russia,  I  do  not  feel  competent  to 
pronounce  judgment  on  the  common  verdict,  and  will  therefore 
limit  my  observations  to  the  six  nations  whose  Love-customs  I 
have  endeavoured  to  describe.  And  even  in  these  cases  I  cannot 
claim  that  the  following  remarks  have  any  greater  value  than 
such  as  attaches  to  mere  casual  jottings.  In  most  European 
countries  the  nations  are  as  wildly  mixed  as  in  the  United  States, 
though  less  recently;  and  it  is  therefore  extremely  difficult  to 
draw  any  general  conclusions,  as  is  shown  by  the  conflicting 
opinions  of  tourists.  Moreover,  each  nation  is  variously  sub- 
divided, so  that  some  things  are,  e.g.  true  of  North  Germany 
which  are  not  true  of  South  Germany,  and  so  in  other  countries. 


506  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Yet  there  are  a  few  points  on  which  travellers  commonly  agree, 
and  these  will  be  briefly  considered  here.  The  highest  beauty  is 
pretty  much  the  same  the  world  over — in  Japan  as  in  France ; 
and  even  among  the  savages  of  Africa  young  girls  are  to  be  found 
who,  but  for  their  colour,  would  be  pronounced  beauties  in 
Europe.  Most  nations  are  on  their  way  towards  this  highest  type 
of  Beauty,  and  they  occupy  different  stages  of  evolution  according 
to  their  attitude  and  advantages  regarding  the  four  principal 
sources  of  Personal  Beauty  —  Hygienic  Habits,  Mixture  of  Na- 
tionalities, Romantic  Love,  and  Mental  Refinement. 


FRENCH  BEAUTY 

Widely  as  tourists  commonly  differ  in  their  opinions  as  to  the 
prevalence  of  Beauty  in  various  countries,  on  one  point  there 
seems  to  be  a  universal  agreement — viz.  that  nowhere  in  Europe 
is  it  so  rare  as  in  France.  Thackeray  notes  that  nature  has 
"rather  stinted  the  bodies  and  limbs  of  the  French  nation." 
Walker,  in  his  work  on  Beauty,  remarks  that  "the  women  of 
France  are  among  the  ugliest  in  the  world"  ;  and  Sir  Lepel  Griffin 
puts  the  truth  pointedly  in  these  words :  National  vanity,  where 
inordinately  developed,  may  take  the  form  of  asserting  that  black 
is  white,  as  in  France,  where  the  average  of  good  looks,  among 
both  men  and  women,  is  perhaps  lower  than  elsewhere  in  Europe. 
If  a  pretty  woman  be  seen  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  she  is  almost 
certainly  English  or  American ;  yet  if  a  foreigner  were  to  form  an 
estimate  of  French  beauty  from  the  rapturous  descriptions  of  con- 
temporary French  novels,  or  from  the  sketches  of  La  Vie 
Parisienne,  he  must  conclude  that  the  Frenchwoman  was  the 
purest  and  loveliest  type  in  the  world  in  face  and  figure. 
The  fiction  in  this  case  disguises  itself  in  no  semblance  of  the 
truth." 

Yet  there  have  been  French  writers  who  felt  the  shortcomings 
of  their  nation  in  regard  to  Personal  Beauty.  One  of  them  says 
that  you  find  in  the  Frenchman  "  the  love  of  the  graceful  rather 
than  the  beautiful"  ;  and  in  the  following  characterisation  of  his 
countrywomen,  by  M.  Figuier,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  he  lays 
much  more  emphasis  on  their  grace  and  the  expressiveness  of 
their  features  than  on  their  Beauty  proper :  "  There  is  in  her  face 
much  that  is  most  pleasing,  although  we  can  assign  her  physi- 
ognomy to  no  determinate  type.  Her  features,  frequently  irregular, 
seem  to  be  borrowed  from  different  races ;  they  do  not  possess 


FRENCH  BEAUTY  607 

that  unity  which  spriugs  from  calm  and  majesty,  but  are  in  the 
higLest  degree  expressive,  and  marvellously  contrived  for  convey- 
ing every  shade  of  feeling.  In  them  we  see  a  smile  though  it  be 
shaded  by  tears ;  a  caress  though  they  threaten  us ;  and  an 
appeal  when  yet  they  command.  Amid  the,  irregularity  oj  this 
physiognomy  the  soul  displays  its  workings.  As  a  rule  the 
Frenchwoman  is  short  of  stature,  but  in  every  proportion  of  her 
form  combines  grace  and  delicacy.  Her  extremities  and  joints 
are  fine  and  elegant,  of  perfect  model  and  distinct  form,  without  a 
suspicion  of  coarseness.  With  her,  moreover,  art  is  brought 
wonderfully  to  assist  nature  "  (The  Races  of  Man). 

It  appears,  indeed,  as  if  Frenchwomen,  who  are  naturally 
bright  and  quickwitted,  endeavoured  to  make  up  in  grace  what 
they  lack  in  beauty.  Hence  nothing  is  more  common  than 
Frenchwomen  who  are  so  fascinating  with  their  graceful  little 
ways  and  movements  that  one  almost  or  quite  forgets  their 
homeliness.  No  French  girl  ever  needs  to  be  taught  how  to  use 
her  eyes  to  best  advantage ;  and,  as  a  clever  newspaper  writer  has 
remarked,  French  girls  "  can  say  more  with  their  shoulders  than 
most  girls  can  with  their  eyes ;  and  when  they  talk  with  eyes, 
hands,  shoulders,  and  tongue  at  once,  it  takes  a  man  of  talent  to 
keep  up." 

Of  course  it  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  no  specimens  of 
supreme  Beauty  are  to  be  found  in  France ;  but  they  are  scarce  as 
strawberries  in  December.  The  general  tendency  of  women  to 
become  either  too  stout  or  too  lean  after  they  have  got  out  of 
their  teens,  is  apparently  more  pronounced  in  France  than  else- 
where in  Europe.  And  as  for  the  men,  they  can  be  recognised 
anywhere,  either  by  their  almost  simian  hairiness  or  their  puny 
appearance.  What  a  difference  in  stature  and  general  manly 
aspect  between  a  regiment  of  French  and  one  of  English  or 
German  soldiers !  And  the  superiority  of  the  English  soldiers 
to  the  French  in  vigour  and  beauty  is  more  than  "  skin-deep  " ;  it 
appears  to  extend  to  the  very  chemical  composition  of  their 
tissues  ;  for  Professor  Topinard  remarks  in  his  Anthropologie  that 
he  enunciated  more  than  twenty  years  ago  "  a  fact  which  was 
more  or  less  confirmed  by  others,  namely,  that  the  mortality 
after  capital  operations  in  English  hospitals  was  less  by  one-half 
than  in  the  French.  We  attributed  it  to  a  better  diet,  to  their 
better  sanitary  arrangements,  and  to  their  superior  management. 
There  was  but  one  serious  objection  offered  to  our  statement.  M. 
Velapeau,  with  his  wonderful  acumen,  made  reply,  at  the  Academy 
of  Medicine,  that  the  flesh  of  the  English  and  of  the  French 


508  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

differed;  in  other  words,  that  the  reaction  after  operations  was 
not  the  same  in  both  races.  It  is,  in  effect,  an  anthropological 
character." 

Thus  the  "  wonderful  acumen "  of  two  French  scientists  has 
established  the  fact  that  French  deterioration  is  shown  not  only  in 
a  surprisingly  low  birth-rate,  but  in  the  general  inferiority  of  the 
French  constitution  :  for  the  ability  to  resist  the  effects  of  wounds 
or  illness  is  evidence  of  a  sound  constitution. 

That  the  chief  cause  of  French  ugliness,  degeneration,  and  in- 
fertility lies  in  their  contemptuous  treatment  of  Romantic  Love, 
must  be  apparent  to  any  one  after  reading  the  preceding  chapter 
on  French  Love.  French  parents  may  point  triumphantly  to  cases 
of  genuine  Conjugal  attachment  in  their  sons  and  daughters,  whose 
marriages  were  based  on  social  or  pecuniary  considerations.  But 
they  forget  the  grandchildren.  It  is  they  who  suffer  from  these 
ill-assorted,  fortuitous  unions.  Only  the  children  of  Love  are 
beautiful  and  destined  to  multiply. 

French  indifference  to  the  claims  of  Love  also  explains  why 
another  leading  source  of  Beauty — the  mixture  of  races — is  in- 
operative in  their  country.  The  French  are  a  very  mixed  nation. 
In  the  North,  says  Dr.  Topinard,  "  we  find  the  descendants  of  the 
Belgse,  the  Walloons,  and  other  Kymri;  in  the  East,  those  of 
Germans  and  Burgundians ;  in  the  West,  Normans  ;  in  the  centre, 
Celts,  who  at  the  same  epoch  at  which  their  name  took  its  origin 
consisted  of  foreigners  of  various  origins  and  of  the  aborigines ;  in 
the  South,  ancient  Aquitanians  and  Basques ;  without  mentioning 
a  host  of  settlers  like  the  Saracens,  who  are  found  here  and  there, 
Tectosages,  who  have  left  at  Toulouse  the  custom  of  cranial  de- 
formities, and  the  traders  who  passed  through  the  Phocsean  town 
of  Marseilles."  But  the  advantages  which  might  result  to  Personal 
Beauty  from  such  a  mixture  of  peoples  are  neutralised  through  the 
universality  of  money-marriages,  notwithstanding  that  these  must 
in  some  cases  bring  together  the  descendants  of  different  races. 
For  a  mixture  of  races  is  not  necessarily  and  always  an  advantage, 
but  only  when  it  enables  a  lover  to  profit  by  the  greater  physi- 
ognomic variety  in  finding  a  mate  whose  qualities  will  blend  har- 
moniously with  his  own. 

In  the  case  of  a  third  primal  source  of  Beauty — Mental  Culture 
— we  find  again  that  its  action  is  impeded  through  the  anomalous 
position  of  Love  in  France.  Inasmuch  as  adulterous  love-making 
is  the  only  kind  of  Love-making  sanctioned  by  French  custom  and 
described  in  French  literature,  it  is  necessary  to  withhold  most 
books  and  periodicals  from  the  young  of  both  sexes,  who  are  thus 


FRENCH  BEAUTY  605 

compelled  to  grow  up  in  ignorance.  "  The  burden  of  ignorance 
presses  sorely  upon  her,"  says  M.  Figuier  of  the  Frenchwoman : 
"  It  is  a  rare  thing  for  a  woman  of  the  people  to  read,  as  only 
those  of  the  higher  classes  have  leisure,  during  their  girlhood,  to 
culiivate  their  minds.  And  yet  even  they  must  not  give  them- 
selves up  too  much  to  study,  nor  aspire  to  honour  or  distinction. 
The  epithet  bas  bleu  ('blue -stocking')  would  soon  bring  them 
back  to  the  common  crowd — an  ignorant  and  frivolous  feminine 
mass." 

Note  that  this  is  the  confession  of  a  patriotic  Frenchman. 
The  fact  that  there  have  been  a  few  brilliant  Frenchwomen, 
famous  for  their  salons,  has  created  the  impression  that  most 
Frenchwomen  are  brilliant,  whereas  the  majority  appear  to  be 
utterly  without  intellectual  interests  or  ambition.  Nor  could  this 
possibly  be  otherwise,  considering  the  extremely  superficial  educa- 
tion which  even  the  most  favoured  receive  in  the  nuns'  schools. 
And  not  a  few  of  them  bring  home  from  these  schools  something 
worse  than  ignorance,  viz.  the  constitution  and  habits  of  an  invalid. 
Not  only  the  girls,  even  the  boys  in  French  schools  are  never 
allowed  to  play  without  supervision.  Healthy  romping  is  con- 
sidered undignified  in  young  girls,  and  when  they  get  a  little  older 
the  high-heeled,  pointed  shoes  prescribed  by  Fashion  take  away 
any  desire  they  may  feel  to  indulge  in  beautifying  exercise.  Un- 
comfortable shoes  and  clothing,  combined  with  the  necessity  of 
having  a  chaperon,  even  to  simply  cross  the  street,  prevent  French 
girls  from  indulging  in  those  long  walks  to  which  English  girls 
owe  their  fine  physique.  Nor  do  the  French  show  such  a  devotion 
to  the  bath-tub  and  other  details  of  Personal  Hygiene  as  their 
neighbours  across  the  channel. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  French,  thanks  to  their  conservative, 
Oriental  customs,  are  placed  at  a  disadvantage  as  regards  every 
one  of  the  four  main  sources  of  Beauty — Romantic  Love,  Mixture 
of  Races,  Mental  Culture,  and  Hygiene.  And  it  is  not  only 
Personal  Beauty  that  suffers.  A  writer  in  La  Eeforme  Socials 
complains  that  "family  feeling  is  dying  out,  the  moral  sense 
is  growing  weaker  .  .  .  the  country  is  falling  into  a  state  of 
anaemia."  And  another  writer  in  the  same  periodical,  after  noting 
the  alarming  fact  that  although  France  has  gained  eight  million 
inhabitants  since  1805,  the  number  of  births  is  no  larger  than  it 
was  then,  calls  upon  those  interested  in  these  symptoms  of  national 
decay  to  investigate  the  local  causes  of  it. 

But  it  is  needless  to  look  for  "local  causes."  The  disease  is 
a  national  one,  and  calls  for  constitutional  treatment.  Let  the 


510  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

French,  in  the  first  place,  instead  of  locking  up  their  girls  till 
they  are  ready  to  be  sold  to  a  rich  roue,  initiate  them  into  the 
arts  of  Anglo-American  Courtship,  and  then  allow  Romantic  Love 
to  take  the  place  of  money  as  a  matchmaker.  That  the  effect  of 
such  a  change  would  be  miraculous  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact 
that  the  products  of  a  few  generations  of  American  love-making — 
French  girls  in  Canada  and  the  United  States — are  vastly  superior 
in  Beauty  and  Health  to  their  transatlantic  cousins. 

In  the  second  place,  the  French  must  give  up  the  notion  that 
disease  is  aristocratic.  "  In  almost  all  countries,"  says  M.  About, 
"  there  exists  a  class  distinguished  from  the  masses  as  the  aris- 
tocracy. In  this  social  miscellany  the  women  have  small  white 
hands,  because  they  wear  gloves  and  do  not  work ;  a  pale  com- 
plexion, because  they  are  never  exposed  to  the  sun;  a  sickly 
appearance  and  thin  features,  because  they  spend  the  four  months 
of  the  winter  at  balls.  Hence  it  follows  that  *  distinction '  con- 
sists in  a  faded  complexion,  sickly  appearance,  a  pair  of  white 
hands,  and  thin  features.  The  Madonnas  of  Raphael  are  not 
'  distingue,'  and  the  Venus  of  Milo  also  is  very  deficient  in  that 
quality." 

After  they  have  ceased  to  ridicule  Love  and  to  worship  Disease, 
it  will  be  in  order  for  the  French  to  cultivate  their  aesthetic  Taste. 
That  of  all  European  men  Frenchmen  show  the  worst  taste  in 
dressing  is  commonly  admitted ;  but  the  preposterous  superstition 
that  Frenchwomen  have  a  special  instinct  for  dressing  tastefully  is 
so  firmly  rooted  in  the  mind  of  women  elsewhere,  that  nothing 
short  of  a  miracle  would  be  able  to  eradicate  it.  The  reason  why 
the  roots  of  this  superstition  are  so  deep  is  this :  Frenchwomen 
rarely  have  any  great  beauty  of  figure  or  features.  Hence  they 
devote  all  their  time  to  devising  means  for  hiding  their  forma] 
defects  and  distracting  the  attention  of  men  by  some  novelty  or 
eccentricity  of  apparel.  In  America  and  Germany,  where  the 
majority  of  the  women  are  also  ugly,  these  tricks  are  eagerly 
copied ;  and  the  pretty  girls  are  compelled  to  yield  to  the  tyranny 
of  the  majority,  as  has  been  fully  explained  in  the  chapter  on  the 
Fashion  Fetish. 

Englishwomen  have,  to  a  large  extent,  emancipated  themselves 
from  Parisian  Fashion  Tyranny,  aided  by  the  protests  of  the  men 
against  self-inflicted  ugliness.  And  it  is  one  of  the  healthiest  signs 
of  the  times  that  in  America,  too,  the  men  are  beginning  to  break 
the  ice  of  gallant  timidity,  and  telling  the  women  plainly  what 
they  think  of  their  hideous  Parisian  fashions.  Not  long  ago  an 
intelligent  woman  wrote  to  the  Boston  Transcript,  asking :  "  Why 


ITALIAN  BEAUTY  611 

will  not  the  press,  instead  of  growling  and  snarling  at  the  poor 
women  who  cannot  help  themselves"  ask  the  theatre  managers  tc 
compel  the  women  to  take  off  their  high  hats,  which,  she  admits, 
ninety-nine  in  a  hundred  women  consider  a  nuisance  1  Yet  they 
"  cannot  help  themselves  ! "  The  poor  women  !  What  a  terrible 
slavery!  the  pretty  women  of  America  compelled  to  adopt  the 
fashions  originated  by  the  ugliest  women  of  Europe  in  order  tc 
hide  their  defects ! 

If  American  women  must  have  models,  let  them  go  to  Spain  or 
Italy  for  them,  especially  in  the  matter  of  headdresses.  Of  the 
Spanish  mantilla,  which  can  be  adapted  to  the  style  of  every  face, 
Prosper  Me'rime'e  says  that  "it  makes  ugly  women  pretty,  and 
pretty  ones  enchanting."  And  a  German  lady  on  her  way  to 
Spain  bought  on  her  way,  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  latest  Parisian 
hat.  "  But  when  I  arrived  in  Madrid,"  she  writes,  "my  genuine 
Parisian  hat  seemed  of  such  apelike  ugliness  that  I  felt  actually 
ashamed  to  wear  it.  For  my  taste  had  been  corrected  and  im- 
proved at  sight  of  the  first  mantilla  I  saw;  and  I  am  convinced 
that  a  large  majority  of  German  women  and  girls  possess  quite  as 
much  sense  of  beauty  as  I,  and  will  therefore  prefer  the  Spanish 
mantilla  to  any  hat  made  by  the  most  noted  modiste  in  Europe." 


ITALIAN  BEAUTY 

Although  differences  in  form,  complexion,  and  physiognomy  are 
to  be  noted  in  different  parts  of  France,  they  are  less  pronounced 
than  in  Italy,  concerning  which  it  is  therefore  more  difficult  to 
make  general  statements.  "  The  barbarian  invasions  in  the  north, 
and  the  contact  with  Greeks  and  Africans  in  the  south,"  says 
M.  Figuier,  "  have  wrought  much  alteration  in  the  primitive  type 
of  the  inhabitants  of  Italy.  Except  in  Rome  and  the  Roman 
Campagna,  the  true  type  of  the  primitive  Latin  population  is 
hardly  to  be  found.  The  Grecian  type  exists  in  the  South,  and 
upon  the  eastern  slope  of  the  Apennines,  while  in  the  North  the 
great  majority  of  faces  are  Gallic.  In  Tuscany  and  the  neigh- 
bouring regions  are  found  the  descendants  of  the  ancient  Etruscans. 
.  .  .  The  mixture  of  African  blood  has  changed  the  organic  type 
of  the  Southern  Italian  to  such  an  extent  as  to  render  him  entirely 
distinct  from  his  Northern  compatriots,  the  exciting  influence  which 
the  climate  has  over  the  senses  imparting  to  his  whole  conduct  a 
peculiar  exuberance." 

In  their  estimate  of  Italian  Beauty  tourists  differ  widely.    The 


512  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

raptures  and  ecstasies  of  some  writers  are  explained  by  others  as 
due  to  the  aesthetic  intoxication  produced  by  sudden  contact  with 
a  new  type ;  and  they  claim  that  a  few  years'  residence  suffices  to 
dispel  these  illusions.  On  the  judgment  of  the  Italians  themselves 
it  is  not  safe  to  rely,  for  that  is  tinged  too  much  by  local  patriotism, 
the  Milanese  claiming  the  pre-eminence  in  Beauty  for  themselves, 
while  the  Venetians,  Florentines,  Komans,  and  Neapolitans  blow 
their  own  horns  respectively.  Professor  Mantegazza  thinks  that 
the  men  are  handsomer  in  Italy  than  the  women,  of  whom  he 
allows  only  about  ten  per  cent  to  have  any  claims  to  real  Beauty. 
Sir  Charles  Bell  notes  that  "Raphael,  in  painting  the  head  of 
Galatea,  found  no  beauty  deserving  to  be  his  model ;  he  is  reported 
to  have  said  that  there  is  nothing  so  rare  as  perfect  beauty  in 
woman  ;  and  that  he  substituted  for  nature  a  certain  idea  inspired 
by  his  fancy."  Montaigne,  who  travelled  in  Italy  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  sixteenth  century,  expressed  his  surprise  at  the  rarity  of 
beauty  in  women  and  girls,  who  at  that  time  were  kept  in  more 
than  French  seclusion.  A  German  author,  Dr.  J.  Volkmann, 
wrote  in  1770  that  "  there  are  few  beautiful  women  in  Rome, 
especially  among  the  higher  classes ;  in  Venice  and  Naples  more 
are  to  be  seen.  The  Italian  himself  has  a  proverb  which  says  that 
Roman  women  are  not  beautiful "  (quoted  by  Ploss). 

Byron,  in  one  of  his  letters,  gives  a  glowing  description  of  an 
Italian  beauty  of  the  Oriental  type  whom  he  met,  and  then  adds : 
"  Whether  being  in  love  with  her  has  steeled  me  or  not,  I  do  not 
know ;  but  I  have  not  seen  many  other  women  who  seem  pretty. 
The  nobility,  in  particular,  are  a  sad-looking  race — the  gentry 
rather  better."  In  another  place  he  writes  that  "  the  general  race 
of  women  appear  to  be  handsome ;  but  in  Italy,  as  on  almost  all 
the  Continent,  the  highest  orders  are  by  no  means  a  well-looking 
generation." 

Yet  was  it  not  Byron  who  wrote  of  Italy  that  it  is  "  the  garden 
of  the  world,"  and  that  its  "very  weeds  are  beautiful"?  And  does 
not  this  apply  to  the  race  as  well  as  the  soil  ?  It  is  because  they 
constantly  live  in  a  garden,  in  the  balmy  air  and  mellowing  sun- 
shine, that  Italians  can  to  a  certain  extent  defy  the  laws  of  personal 
Hygiene,  and  flourish  under  conditions  which  would  torture  us  to 
death.  Miss  Margaret  Collier  remarks,  in  Our  Home  by  the 
Adriatic,  that  in  the  rural  communities,  even  among  the  well-to-do, 
to  ask  for  a  bath  is  to  create  alarm  as  to  the  state  of  your  health. 
And  Berlioz  speaks  somewhere  of  Italian  peasant-girls  "  carrying 
heavy  copper  vessels  and  faggots  on  their  heads;  but  all  so  wretched, 
so  miserable,  so  tattered,  so  filthily  dirty,  that,  in  spite  of  the  beauty 


ITALIAN  BEAUTY  512 

of  the  race  and  the  picturesqueness  of  their  costume,  all  other 
feelings  are  swallowed  up  in  one  of  utter  compassion." 

Could  the  cosmetic  value  of  fresh  air  and  sunshine  be  more 
strikingly  attested  than  by  the  fact  that  Berlioz  could  speak  of 
*'  the  beauty  of  the  race,"  notwithstanding  the  national  indifference 
to  the  laws  of  cleanliness  ? 

In  regard  to  Romantic  Love  as  a  source  of  Beauty,  the  Italians 
also  occupy  a  somewhat  anomalous  position.  In  the  rural  districts 
French  matrimonial  methods  seem  to  be  largely  followed.  Miss 
Collier  mentions  a  young  lady  who  visited  her  to  receive  her 
congratulations  on  her  approaching  marriage,  and  who,  on  being 
asked  the  name  of  her  future  husband,  replied  naively,  "Oh,  i 
don't  know;  papa  has  not  yet  told  me  that."  The  peasantry, 
however,  are  free  to  choose  their  own  mates,  and  it  is  among  them 
that  Italian  Beauty  is  accordingly  most  prevalent  In  the  cities 
the  method  of  love-making  is  "operatic," as  we  saw  in  the  chapter 
on  Italian  Love ;  but  the  main  point  is  that  Individual  Choice  is 
not  made  impossible  as  in  France,  and  that  the  Italians  worship 
Love  as  a  law  instead  of  looking  on  it  with  contemptuous  cynicism 
and  ridicule. 

The  way  in  which  the  Mixture  of  Races  affects  Italian  Beauty 
affords  a  fresh  illustration  of  the  superiority  of  the  Brunette  type. 
In  Germany,  by  general  consent,  Beauty  is  much  more  frequent  in 
the  South,  where  brunettes  abound,  than  in  the  North,  where  they 
are  scarce.  Hence  we  may  conclude  that  the  Blonde  type  is 
improved  by  the  intermixture  of  the  Brunette  type.  But  is  the 
Brunette  type  of  Northern  Italy  improved  to  the  same  degree  by 
the  admixture  of  Northern  Blondes?  Not  in  my  judgment. 
Venice  and  Milan  and  Bologna,  it  is  true,  boast  many  beautiful 
women ;  but  has  any  tourist  in  writing  about  these  cities  ever 
expressed  much  admiration  for  Italian  Blondes?  And  are  not 
Naples  and  Capri,  the  paradise  of  Brunettes,  commonly  regarded 
as  the  region  where  Italian  Beauty  is  seen  at  its  best  ?  Here  it  is 
chiefly  dark  races  that  have  intermingled,  hence  the  eyes  are  sure 
to  be  of  a  deep  brown  colour;  whereas  in  Northern  Italy  the 
introduction  of  blonde  blood  produces  the  lighter,  less  decided  tints 
of  the  ills  which  we  do  not  admire.  This  disadvantage,  it  is  true, 
is  also  encountered  in  South  Germany,  but  it  is  neutralised  by  the 
gain  of  dark  eyebrows,  and  long  black  lashes,  and  the  more  supple 
and  rounded  limbs  of  the  South. 

That  mental  culture  adds  much  to  Italian  beauty  cannot  be 
said,  for  Italian  women  of  all  classes  are  noted  for  their  intellectual 
indolence.  But  atonement  is  largely  made  for  this  by  their  extreme 

2L 


514  KOMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

emotional  susceptibility.  Blue  skies,  rank  vegetation,  pretty 
scenery,  and  a  natural  love  of  music  have  softened  and  trained  their 
feelings ;  and  though  the  Italian  climate  does  not  favour  profound 
artistic  culture  it  warms  the  blood  and  incites  the  features  to  give 
expression  to  every  passing  mood.  It  is  this  habit  of  emotional 
expression  that  has  given  a  unique  charm  and  the  power  of  graceful 
modulation  to  Italian  features.  As  a  German  artist,  Herr  Otto 
Knille,  remarks  of  the  Italians,  "They  pose  unintentionally.  Their 
features,  especially  among  the  lower  classes,  have  been  moulded 
through  mimic  expression  practised  for  thousands  of  years.  Gesture- 
language  has  shaped  the  hands  of  many  into  models  of  anatomic 
clearness.  They  have  a  complete  language  of  signs  and  gestures, 
which  each  one  understands,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  ballet.  Add 
to  this  the  innate  grace  of  this  race  .  .  .  and  we  see  that  the 
Italian  artist  has  an  abundance  of  material  for  copying,  as  compared 
with  which  the  German  artist  must  admit  his  extreme  poverty. 
Whoever  has  lived  in  Italy  is  in  a  position  to  appreciate  these 
advantages.  .  .  .  Think  of  the  neck,  the  nape,  and  the  bust  of 
Italian  woman,  the  fine  joints  and  the  elastic  gait  of  both  men  and ' 
women.  Nor  are  we  much  better  endowed  as  regards  the  physiog- 
nomy. The  German  potato-face  is  not  a  mere  fancy — the  mirror 
which  A.  de  Neuville  has  held  up  to  us,  though  clouded  with 
prejudice,  shows  us  an  image  not  entirely  untrue  to  life.  We 
artists  know  how  rarely  a  head,  especially  one  which  lacks  the 
enchanting  charm  of  youth,  can  be  used  as  a  model  for  anything 
but  flat  realism.  Most  German  faces,  instead  of  becoming  more 
clearly  chiselled  and  elaborated  with  age,  appear  more  spongy, 
vague,  and  unmeaning." 

Winklemann's  remarks  on  Italian  Beauty  are  in  the  same  vein  : 
"  We  seldom  find  in  the  fairest  portions  of  Italy  the  features  of 
the  face  unfinished,  vague,  and  inexpressive,  as  is  frequently  the 
case  on  the  other  side  of  the  Alps ;  but  they  have  partly  an  air  of 
nobleness,  partly  of  acuteness  and  intelligence;  and  the  form  of 
the  face  is  generally  large  and  full,  and  the  parts  of  it  in  harmony 
with  each  other.  The  superiority  of  conformation  is  so  manifest 
that  the  head  of  the  humblest  man  among  the  people  might  be 
introduced  in  the  most  dignified  historical  painting,  especially  one 
in  which  aged  men  are  to  be  represented.  And  among  the  women 
of  this  class,  even  in  places  of  the  least  importance,  it  would  not 
be  difficult  to  find  a  Juno.  The  lower  portion  of  Italy,  which 
enjoys  a  softer  climate  than  any  other  part  of  it,  brings  forth  men 
of  superb  and  vigorously-designed  forms,  which  appear  to  have 
*been  made,  as  it  were,  for  the  purposes  of  sculpture." 


SPANISH  BEAUTY  515 

In  confirmation  of  my  statement  that  in  Northern  as  in  Southern 
Italy  it  is  the  Brunette  type  that  chiefly  excites  the  admiration  of 
the  tourist,  I  may  finally  cite  Heine's  remarks  on  the  women  of 
Trent.  For,  although  Trent  is  a  town  of  the  Austrian  Tyrol,  it 
yet  is  practically  an  Italian  community.  Had  not  business  called 
him  southwards,  Heine  relates  in  his  Journey  from  Munich  to 
Genoa,  he  would  have  felt  tempted  to  remain  in  this  town  where 
"  beautiful  girls  were  moving  about  in  bevies.  I  do  not  know,"  he 
adds,  "whether  other  tourists  will  approve  of  the  adjective 
'beautiful*  in  this  case;  but  I  liked  the  women  of  Trent  ex- 
ceptionally well.  They  were  just  of  the  kind  I  admire — and  I  do 
love  these  pale,  elegiac  faces  with  the  large  black  eyes  that  gaze  at 
you  so  love-sick ;  I  love  also  the  dusky  tint  of  those  proud  necks 
which  Phoebus  already  has  loved  and  browned  with  his  kisses ;  .  .  . 
but  above  all  things  do  I  love  that  graceful  gait,  that  dumb  music 
of  the  body,  those  limbs  with  their  exquisitely  rhythmic  movements, 
luxurious,  supple,  divinely  careless,  mortally  languid,  anon  sethereal, 
majestic,  and  always  highly  poetic.  I  love  such  things  as  I  love 
poetry  itself ;  and  these  figures  with  their  melodious  movements, 
this  wondrous  concert  of  femininity  which  delighted  my  senses, 
found  an  echo  in  my  heart,  and  awoke  in  it  sympathetic  strains." 


SPANISH  BEAUTY 

In  Spain,  as  in  Italy,  Germany,  France,  and  the  United  States, 
we  find  more  Personal  Beauty  in  the  Southern  than  in  the 
Northern  regions.  This  coincidence  cannot  be  accidental,  but 
attests  the  great  cosmetic  value  of  sunshine  and  plenty  of  fresh 
air.  Perhaps  no  other  portion  of  the  globe  has  such  a  paradisiacal 
climate  as  Andalusia,  where  the  inhabitants  practically  pass  all 
their  time  in  the  open  air, — on  verandahs  and  in  their  cosy  little 
galleries,  and  fragrant  orange  groves,  in  whose  shade  they  can 
spend  the  hot  part  of  the  day,  while  the  nights  are  cooled  by 
balmy  mountain  or  sea  breezes.  To  these  natural  hygienic  advan- 
tages add  the  unusually  happy  mixture  of  nationalities,  and  the 
fact  that  Romantic  Love  is  much  less  impeded  in  its  sway  than  in 
France  or  Italy,  and  we  see  at  a  glance  to  what  the  young  Anda- 
lusian  owes  the  undulating  lines  and  luscious  plumpness  of  her 
figure,  her  ravishing  facial  beauty,  and  her  graceful  gait,  or 
"  melodious  movements,"  as  Heine  would  say. 

Surely  the  goddess  of  Beauty  herself  mixed  the  national  colours 
that  make  up  the  Spanish  type.  When  Spain  was  added  to  the 


616  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Roman  dominion  she  was,  as  Mr.  E.  A.  Freeman  remarks,  "the 
only  one  of  the  great  countries  of  Europe  where  the  mass  of  the 
people  were  not  of  the  Aryan  stock.  The  greater  part  of  the  land 
was  still  held  by  the  Iberians,  as  a  small  part  is  even  new  by 
their  descendants  the  Basques.  But  in  the  central  part  of  the 
peninsula  Celtic  tribes  had  pressed  in,  and  .  .  .  there  were  some 
Phoenician  colonies  in  the  south,  and  some  Greek  colonies  on  the 
east  coast.  In  the  time  between  the  first  and  second  Punic  Wars, 
Hamilcar,  Hasdrubal,  and  Hannibal  had  won  all  Spain  as  far  as 
the  Ebro  for  Carthage."  Among  the  other  nations  which  succes- 
sively overran  the  country  were  the  Goths,  Vandals,  Suevi,  and 
Moors;  to  whom  must  be  added  large  numbers  of  Jews  and 
Gypsies,  of  which  latter  race  Spain  still  possesses  about  50,000. 

Most  of  these  nations  had  some  favourable  physical  traits  which 
Sexual  Selection  had  the  opportunity  to  fix  upon  and  perpetuate ; 
while  sundry  incongruities  must  have  been  neutralised  and  obliter- 
ated by  the  intermingling  of  races.  And  another  important  con- 
sideration is,  that  this  intermingling  of  nations  was  effected  so 
many  centuries  ago  that  it  is  now  no  longer  a  heterogeneous 
physical  mixture,  but  a  true  u  chemical,"  or  physiological,  fusion, 
in  which  dissonances  and  incongruities  are  less  likely  to  occur  than 
in  countries  where  the  mixture  is  more  recent. 

That  the  addition  of  Greek  and  Roman  blood,  redolent  of 
ancient  civilisation,  to  the  original  Spanish  stock  was  an  advantage 
is  obvious.  The  Goth  brought  his  manly  vigour ;  the  Gypsy  his 
concentrated  essence  of  Brunetteism ;  the  Arab  his  oval  face, 
dusky  complexion,  the  straight  line  connecting  nose  and  forehead, 
the  small  mouth  and  white  teeth,  the  dark  and  glossy  hair,  the 
delicate  extremities  and  gracefully-arched  foot,  and  above  all,  the 
black  eyes  and  long  black  eyelashes.  If  Shakspere  is  right  in 
saying  that  there  is  no  author  in  the  world  "  teaches  such  beauty 
as  a  woman's  eye,"  then  Andalusia  easily  leads  the  world  in 
Personal  Beauty.  The  prosiest  tourist  becomes  poetic  in  describ- 
ing the  Andalusian's  "  black  eye  that  mocks  her  coal-black  veil." 
Large  and  round  are  these  eyes,  like  those  of  Oriental  Houris; 
long  and  dense  their  black  lashes,  which  yet  cannot  smother  the 
mysterious  fire  and  sparkle  which  their  iris  appears  to  have 
borrowed  of  the  Gypsies.  In  many  cases  there  is  a  vague,  piquant 
indication  of  the  almond-shaped  palpebral  aperture — one  of  the 
Semitic  traits  derived  from  the  Phoenicians,  Jews,  and  Saracens. 
And  then,  what  woman  can  make  such  irresistibly  fascinating  use 
of  her  eyes  as  the  Spanish  brunette  ? 

M.  Figuier  thus  sums  up  the  physical  characteristics  of  the 


SPANISH  BEAUTY  617 

Spanish  woman :  "  She  is  generally  brunette,  although  the  blonde 
type  occurs  much  more  frequently  than  is  usually  supposed.  The 
Spanish  woman  is  almost  always  small  of  stature.  Who  has  not 
observed  the  large  eyes,  veiled  by  thick  lashes,  her  delicate  nose, 
and  well-formed  nostrils?  Her  form  is  always  urdulating  and 
graceful ;  her  limbs  are  round  and  beautifully  moulded,  and  her 
extremities  of  incomparable  delicacy.  She  is  a  chaiming  mixture 
of  vigour,  languor,  and  grace." 

"  The  appearance  of  a  Spanish  woman,"  says  Bo^umil  Goltz, 
"is  the  expression  of  her  character.  Her  fine  figure,  her  majestic 
gait,  her  sonorous  voice,  her  black,  flashing  eye,  the  liveliness  of 
her  gesticulations,  in  a  word,  her  whole  external  pers  mality  indi- 
cates her  character." 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  whereas  French  Beauty  appears  to  be 
visible  to  French  eyes  only,  and  regarding  Italian  Beauty  opinions 
differ,  all  nations  unite  in  singing  the  praises  of  "  Spain's  dark- 
glancing  daughters."  To  the  French  and  German  testimony  just 
cited  may  now  be  added  a  few  Italian,  English,  an'l  American 
witnesses. 

Signer  E.  de  Amicis,  in  his  interesting  work  on  Spain,  says  of 
the  women  of  Madrid  that  "  they  are  still  the  same  little  women 
so  besung  for  their  great  eyes,  small  hands,  and  tiny  feet,  with 
their  very  black  hair,  but  skin  rather  white  than  dark,  so  well- 
formed,  erect,  lithe,  and  vivacious."  But,  like  all  other  tourists, 
he  reserves  most  of  his  remarks  on  Spanish  women  for  his  chapters 
on  Andalusia,  although  this  is  the  part  of  Spain  which  also  offers 
the  richest  material  for  description  in  its  architecture  and  scenery. 
Concerning  the  women  and  girls  of  Seville,  as  seen  in  the  large 
tobacco  factory  which  employs  5000  females,  he  says :  "  There 
are  some  very  beautiful  faces,  and  even  those  that  are  not  abso- 
lutely beautiful,  have  something  about  them  which  attracts  the 
eye  and  remains  impressed  upon  the  memory — the  colouring,  eyes, 
brows,  and  smile,  for  instance.  Many,  especially  the  so-called 
gitane,  are  dark  brown,  like  mulattoes,  and  have  protruding  lips  : 
others  have  such  large  eyes  that  a  faithful  likeness  of  them  would 
seem  an  exaggeration.  The  majority  are  small,  well-made,  and 
all  wear  a  rose,  pink,  or  a  bunch  of  field-flowers  among  their 
braids.  ...  On  coming  out  of  the  factory,  you  seem  to  see  on 
every  side  for  a  time,  black  pupils  which  look  at  you  with  a 
thousand  different  expressions  of  curiosity,  ennui,  sympathy,  sad- 
ness, and  drowsiness." 

The  same  writer  found  that  "  The  feminine  type  of  Cadiz  was 
not  less  attractive  than  that  celebrated  one  at  Seville.  The 


518  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

women  are  a  little  taller,  a  trifle  stouter,  and  rather  darker. 
Some  fine  observer  has  asserted  that  they  are  of  the  Greek  type ; 
but  I  cannot  see  where.  I  saw  nothing,  with  the  exception  of 
their  stature,  but  the  Andalusian  type ;  and  this  sufficed  to  make 
me  heave  sighs  deep  enough  to  have  blown  along  a  boat  and 
obliged  me  to  return  as  soon  as  possible  to  my  ship,  as  a  place  of 
peace  and  refuge." 

Mr.  G.  P.  Lathrop's  description  (in  Spanish  Vistas)  of  the 
girls  in  the  Seville  factory  is  pitched  in  a  somewhat  lower  key 
than  Signor  de  Amicis's :  "  Some  of  them,"  he  writes,  "  had  a 
spendthrift,  common  sort  of  beauty,  which,  owing  to  their  southern 
vivacity  and  fine  physique,  had  the  air  of  being  more  than  it  really 
was.  .  .  .  There  were  some  appalling  old  crones.  .  .  .  Others, 
on  the  contrary,  looked  blooming  and  coquettish.  Many  were  in 
startling  deshabille,  resorted  to  on  account  of  the  intense  (July) 
heat,  and  hastened  to  draw  pretty  pafmelos  of  variegated  dye  over 
their  bare  shoulders  when  they  saw  us  coming.  .  .  .  The  beauty 
of  these  Carmens  has  certainly  been  exaggerated.  It  may  be 
remarked  here  that,  as  an  offset  to  occasional  disappointment 
arising  from  such  exaggerations,  all  Spanish  women  walk  with 
astonishing  gracefulness,  and  natural  and  elastic  step ;  and  that  is 
their  chief  advantage  over  women  of  other  nations." 

A  writer  in  Macmillan's  Magazine  (1874),  after  referring  to 
"  the  stately  upright  walk  of  the  Spanish  ladies,  and  the  graceful 
carriage  of  the  head,"  notes  that  a  mother  will  not  allow  her 
daughter  to  carry  a  basket,  so  as  not  to  destroy  her  "queenly 
walk " ;  and  "  her  dull  eye  too  will  grow  moist  with  a  tear,  and 
her  worn  face  will  kindle  with  absolute  softness  and  sweetness, 
if  an  English  seiior  expresses  his  admiration  of  her  child's  magnifi- 
cent hair  or  flashing  black  eyes." 

The  description  given  by  the  same  writer  of  a  scene  he  wit- 
nessed along  the  Guadalquiver,  suggests  one  reason  of  the  healthy 
physique  and  vitality  of  Spanish  women:  "An  old  mill-house, 
with  its  clumsy  wheel  and  a  couple  of  pomegranates,  shaded  one 
corner  of  this  part  of  the  river ;  and  under  their  shade,  sitting  up 
to  their  shoulders  in  the  water,  on  the  huge  round  boulders  of 
which  the  bottom  of  the  river  is  composed,  were  groups  of 
Spanish  ladies.  Truly  it  was  a  pretty  sight !  They  sat  as  though 
on  chairs,  clothed  to  the  neck  in  bathing-gowns  of  the  gaudiest 
colours — red,  gray,  yellow,  and  blue ;  and,  holding  in  one  hand 
their  umbrellas,  and  with  the  other  fanning  themselves,  they 
formed  a  most  picturesque  group." 

Washington  Irving,  in  a  private  letter,  paints  this  picture  of  a 


SPANISH  BEAUTY  519' 

Spanish  beauty  whom  he  saw  on  a  coast  steamer:  *{A  young 
married  lady,  of  about  four  or  five  and  twenty,  middle-sized, 
finely-modelled,  a  Grecian  outline  of  face,  a  complexion  sallow  yet 
healthful,  raven  black  hair,  eyes  dark,  large,  and  beaming,  softened 
by  long  eyelashes,  lips  full  and  rosy  red,  yet  finely  chiselled,  and 
teeth  of  dazzling  whiteness.  Her  hand  ...  is  small,  exquisitely 
formed,  with  taper  fingers,  and  blue  veins.  I  never  saw  a  female 
hand  more  exquisite."  The  husband  of  this  young  lady,  noticing 
that  Mr.  Irving  was  apparently  sketching  her,  questioned  him  on 
the  matter.  Mr.  Irving  read  his  sketch  to  the  man,  who  was 
greatly  pleased  with  it;  and  this  led  to  a  delightful  though  brief 
acquaintance. 

lu  another  letter,  Washington  Irving  writes  to  a  friend: 
"  There  are  beautiful  women  in  Seville  as  ...  there  are  in  all 
other  great  cities ;  but  do  not,  my  worthy  and  inquiring  friend, 
expect  a  perfect  beauty  to  be  staring  you  in  the  face  at  every  turn, 
or  you  will  be  awfully  disappointed.  Andalusia,  generally  speak- 
ing, derives  its  renown  for  the  beauty  of  its  women  and  the  beauty 
of  its  landscape,  from  the  rare  and  captivating  charms  of  individuals. 
The  generality  of  its  female  faces  are  as  sunburnt  and  void  of 
bloom  and  freshness  as  its  plains.  I  am  convinced,  the  great 
fascination  of  Spanish  women  arises  from  their  natural  talent,  their 
fire  and  soul,  which  beam  through  their  dark  and  flashing  eyes, 
and  kindle  up  their  whole  countenance  in  the  course  of  an  interest- 
ing conversation.  As  I  have  had  but  few  opportunities  of  judging 
them  in  this  way,  I  can  only  criticise  them  with  the  eye  of  a 
sauntering  observer.  It  is  like  judging  of  a  fountain  when  it  is 
not  in  play,  or  a  fire  when  it  lies  dormant  and  neither  flames  nor 
sparkles." 

Byron,  in  Childe  Harold,  waxes  enthusiastic  over  the  Spanish 
woman's  "  fairy  form,  with  more  than  female  grace  " — 

"  Her  glance  how  wildly  beautiful !  how  much 
Hath  Phoebus  wooed  in  vain  to  spoil  her  cheek, 
"Which  glows  yet  smoother  from  his  amorous  clutch  ! 
"\v  ho  round  the  North  for  paler  dames  would  seek  ? 
How  poor  their  forms  appear  !  how  languid,  wan,  and  weak  !*' 

But  in  a  letter  from  Cadiz  Byron  notes  the  weak  as  well  as  the 
strong  points  of  Spanish  women.  "  With  all  national  prejudice,  I 
must  confess,  the  women  of  Cadiz  are  as  far  superior  to  the  Eng- 
lish women  in  beauty,  as  the  Spaniards  are  inferior  to  the  English 
in  every  quality  that  dignifies  the  name  of  man.  .  .  The  Spanish 
women  are  all  alike,  their  education  the  same.  .  .  .  Certainly  they 
axe  fascinating;  but  their  minds  have  only  one  idea,  and  the 


520  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

business  of  their  lives  is  intrigue.  .  .  .  Long  black  hair,  dark  lan- 
guishing eyes,  clear  olive  complexions,  and  forms  more  graceful  in 
motion  than  can  be  conceived  by  an  Englishman  used  to  the  drowsy, 
listless  air  of  his  countrywomen,  added  to  the  most  becoming  dress, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  the  most  decent  in  the  world,  render  a 
Spanish  beauty  irresistible." 

"  Their  minds  have  only  one  idea,"  is  an  exaggeration,  for  the 
Andalusian  women  are  famed  for  a  considerable  amount  of  innate 
wit,  rivalling  the  brightness  of  their  eyes.  Yet  of  deeper  intel- 
lectual interests  there  are  none.  Of  the  total  population  of  Spain 
only  a  quarter  can  read  and  write  ;  for  although  schools  exist  in 
abundance,  they  are  very  generally  neglected ;  and  the  estimation 
in  which  teachers  are  held  is  seen  from  the  fact  that  out  of  15,000 
one  half  receive  an  annual  salary  of  less  than  twenty  pounds 
sterling. 

Mental  Culture  avenges  itself  bitterly  on  the  women  of  Spain, 
as  of  other  Southern  countries,  for  this  neglect  of  its  claims. 
While  the  freshness  of  youthful  Beauty  remains,  all  is  well,  for 
then  the  sensuous  charms  are  so  great  that  intellectual  claims  can 
be  ignored.  But  when  this  freshness  fades,  then  it  is  that  the 
features  begin  to  show  a  lack  of  mental  training.  Intellectual 
apathy  masks  the  face,  and  gives  it  an  expression  of  vacuity ; 
exercise  is  neglected,  and  indolence,  combined  with  excessive  in- 
dulgence in  fattening  food,  soon  destroy  the  lovely  contours  of  the 
figure  and  the  fairy-like  gait.  "  A  Spanish  woman  of  forty  appears 
twice  as  old,"  says  Goltz. 

Thus  we  see  that  for  perfect  and  permanent  Beauty  all  its 
sources  must  be  kept  open  and  utilised. 

Attention  must  finally  be  called  to  one  feature  of  Andalusian 
Beauty  which  all  tourists  emphasise,  namely,  the  small  stature  of 
the  women,  to  which  they  largely  owe  their  exceptional  grace  of 
gait.  And  there  are  reasons  for  believing  that  the  perfected  woman 
of  the  millennium  will  resemble  the  Andalusian  Brunette,  not  only 
in  complexion,  hair,  eyes,  gait,  and  tapering  plumpness  of  figure, 
but  also  in  stature.  In  other  words,  it  seems  that  Sexual  Selec- 
tion is  evolving  the  petite  Brunette  as  the  ideal  of  womanhood. 

Among  the  ancient  Greeks  who  were  not  swayed  by  Romantic 
Love,  Amazons  were  greatly  admired,  as  previously  noted  ;  and  Mr. 
Gladstone  remarks  that  "  stature  was  a  great  element  of  beauty  in 
the  view  of  the  ancients,  for  women  as  well  as  for  men ;  and  their 
admiration  of  tallness,  even  in  women,  is  hardly  restrained  by  a 
limit" 

From  this  Greek  predilection  modern  sesthetico-amorous  Taste 


SPANISH  BEAUTY  521 

differs,  for  several  weighty  reasons.  The  first  is  that  a  very  tall 
and  bulky  woman,  though  she  may  be  stately  and  majestic,  cannot 
be  very  graceful ;  and  Grace,  as  we  know,  is  as  potent  a  source  of 
Love  as  formal  Beauty.  Again,  there  is  something  incongruous 
and  almost  comic  in  the  thought  of  a  very  large  woman  submitting 
to  Love's  caresses ;  and  le  ridicule  tue.  Thirdly,  great  stature  is 
rarely  associated  with  delicate  joints  and  extremities.  But  the 
principal  reason  why  the  modern  lover  disapproves  of  Amazonian 
women,  mental  and  physical,  is  because  they  are  quasi-masculine. 
Komantic  Love  tends  to  differentiate  the  sexes  in  stature  as  in 
everything  else.  True,  Mr.  Galton,  after  making  observations  on 
205  married  couples,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  "marriage 
selection  takes  little  or  no  account  of  shortness  and  tallness.  There 
are  undoubtedly  sexual  preferences  for  moderate  contrasts  in 
height ;  but  the  marriage  choice  appears  to  be  guided  by  so  many 
and  more  important  considerations  that  questions  of  stature  exert 
no  perceptible  influence  upon  it.  ...  Men  and  women  of  con- 
trasted heights,  short  and  tall  or  tall  and  short,  married  just  about 
as  frequently  as  men  and  women  of  similar  heights,  both  tall  or 
both  short;  there  were  32  cases  of  one  to  27  of  the  other/** 

But  Mr.  Galton's  argument  is  rather  weak.  He  admits  that 
"there  are  undoubtedly  sexual  preferences  for  moderate  con- 
trast in  height " ;  arid  his  own  figures  show  32  to  27  in  favour  of 
mixed-stature  marriages,  in  most  of  which  the  women  must  have 
been  shorter,  owing  to  the  prevalent  feminine  inferiority  in  size. 
And  in  course  of  time  the  elimination  of  non-amorous  motives  of 
marriage  will  assist  the  law  of  sexual  differentiation  in  suppressing 
Amazons. 

The  modern  masculine  preference  for  petite  female  stature  is, 
furthermore,  attested  by  an  irrefutable  philological  argument  which 
will  be  found  in  the  following  citation  from  Crabb's  English 
Synonymes  :  "  Prettiness  is  always  coupled  with  simplicity ;  it  is 
incompatible  with  that  which  is  large ;  a  tall  woman  with  mas- 
culine features  cannot  be  pretty,  Beauty  is  peculiarly  a  female 
perfection;  in  the  male  sex  it  is  rather  a  defect;  a  man  can 
scarcely  be  beautiful  without  losing  his  manly  characteristics,  bold- 
ness and  energy  of  mind,  strength  and  robustness  of  limb ;  but 
though  a  man  may  not  be  beautiful  or  pretty,  he  may  be  fine  or 
handsome"  A  woman  is  fine  who  with  a  striking  figure  unites 
shape  and  symmetry ;  a  woman  is  liandsome  who  has  good  features, 
and  pretty  if  with  symmetry  of  feature  be  united  delicacy." 

Burke  believed  that  it  is  possible  to  fall  in  love  with  a  ?ery 
small  person,  but  not  with  a  giant.  There  is,  indeed,  a  natural 


522  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

prejudice  in  the  modern  mind  against  very  tall  stature  even  in  men. 
Thus,  we  read  in  Fuller's  Andronicus :  "  Often  the  cockloft  is 
empty  in  those  whom  Nature  hath  built  many  stories  high  " ;  and 
Bacon  is  reported  to  have  said  •  that  Nature  did  never  put  her 
precious  jewels  into  a  garret  four  stories  high,  and  therefore  that 
exceeding  tall  men  had  ever  very  empty  heads."  An  apparent 
scientific  confirmation  of  this  belief  is  found  in  Professor  Hermann's 
Nervemystem  (ii.  195),  where  we  read  that  "when  the  body 
becomes  abnormally  large,  the  brain  begins  to  decrease  again, 
relatively,  as  Langer  found  in  measuring  giant  skeletons."  And 
another  sign  of  regression  is  found  in  the  fact  that  tall  men  are  apt 
to  have  relatively  too  heavy  jaws. 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  BEAUTY 

Although  the  Germans  of  to-day  are  by  no  means  a  pure  and 
distinct  race,  they  are  less  thoroughly  and  variously  mixed  than 
most  other  European  nations ;  and  this  is  one  of  the  main  reasons- 
why  Personal  Beauty  is  comparatively  rare  in  the  Fatherland.  It 
is  rarest  in  the  northern  and  central  regions,  where  the  original 
Blonde  type  is  best  preserved,  and  becomes  more  frequent  the 
nearer  we  approach  the  Brunette  neighbours  of  Germany — Italy, 
Austria-Hungary,  and  Poland — whose  women  have  been  aptly 
called  "  the  Spaniards  of  the  north."  France  forms  an  exception. 
There,  thanks  to  the  imprisonment  of  Cupid,  ugliness  is  so  rampant 
that  intermarriage  only  intensifies  the  natural  homeliness, — a  fact 
of  which  any  one  may  convince  himself  by  spending  a  few  days  in 
the  borderland  between  France  and  Germany. 

Partly  owing  to  this  lack  of  variety  in  the  national  composition 
of  the  Germans,  partly  to  the  custom  of  chaperonage,  Romantic 
Love  has  not  as  wide  a  scope  of  selective  action  as  elsewhere ;  and  as 
if  these  impediments  to  the  increase  of  Beauty  were  not  sufficient, 
they  are  augmented  in  a  wholesale  fashion  by  the  parental  illusion 
that  the  Love-instinct  is  a  less  trustworthy  guide  to  a  happy 
marriage  than  "  Reason,"  i.e.  the  consideration  that  the  bride  has 
a  few  thousand  marks  and  belongs  to  the  same  social  clique  as  the 
bridegroom.  Like  their  French  neighbours,  the  Germans  in  these 
cases  forget  the  claims  of  the  grandchildren  to  Health  and  Beauty 
— i.e.  the  harmonious  fusion  of  the  complementary  parental  qua- 
lities by  which  Love  is  inspired. 

But  in  regard  to  the  third  source  of  Beauty — Mental  Culture 
— the  Germans  surely  are  pre-eminent  among  nations,  it  will  be 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  BEAUTY  62S 

claimed.  In  one  sense,  no  doubt,  they  are.  Almost  all  Germans 
can  read  and  write,  and  no  race  equals  them  in  special  erudition. 
But  erudition  is  not  culture.  The  German  system  of  education  is 
exceedingly  defective,  because  it  cultivates  too  largely  the  lowest 
of  the  mental  faculties — the  Memory.  The  number  of  scientific, 
historic,  and  philological  facts  a  German  schoolboy  knows  by  heart, 
is  simply  astounding ;  but  he  has  not  digested  them,  and  cannot 
apply  them  practically.  No  attempt  is  made  to  cultivate  his 
higher  faculties — his  imagination,  originality,  or  the  gift  of  ex- 
pressing a  thought  in  elegant  language.  Were  a  candidate  to  show 
the  wit  and  brilliancy  of  a  Heine  or  a  Shakspere,  it  would  not  add 
one  grain  to  the  weight  his  pedantic  professors  attach  to  his  work. 
They  will  not  favour  the  growth  of  qualities  in  which  they  them- 
selves are  so  conspicuously  deficient.  Note,  for  example,  the  vast 
contempt  with  which  the  pedants  of  the  University  of  Berlin  look 
down  on  "the  German  Darwin,"  Professor  Haeckel,  because  he 
dares  not  only  to  be  original,  but  to  write  his  books  in  a  language 
clear  as  crystal,  and  adorned  with  wit,  satire,  and  literary  polish. 

Other  nations  are  proud  of  their  great  men  even  before  they  are 
dead  ;  not  so  the  Germans.  Nor  are  the  Germans  really  a  literary 
nation,  as  a  whole.  Many  books  are  written  there,  but  they  rarely 
come  under  the  head  of  literature ;  and  their  circulation,  on  the 
average,  is  not  one-tenth  that  of  English,  French,  and  American 
books.  Beer  is  more  popular  than  books. 

No,  the  pedantic  erudition,  which  alone  is  officially  honoured 
in  Germany,  is  not  synonymous  with  Mental  Culture.  It  does 
not  vivify  the  features  sufficiently  to  mould  them  into  plastic  shape. 
Hence  the  prevalence  of  the  "spongy  features"  and  Teutonic 
"  potato-faces  "  referred  to  by  a  German  artist  quoted  in  the  chapter 
on  Italian  Beauty.  "  The  true  national  character  of  the  Germans 
is  clumsiness,"  says  Schopenhauer ;  and  again  :  "  The  Germans  are 
distinguished  from  all  other  nations  by  the  slovenliness  of  their 
style,  as  of  their  dress."  And  the  Swiss  Professor,  H.  F.  Amiel, 
remarks  in  his  Journal  Intime  that  "  the  notion  of  '  bad  taste ' 
seems  to  have  no  place  in  German  aesthetics.  Their  elegance  has 
no  grace  in  it ;  they  cannot  understand  the  enormous  difference  there 
is  between  distinction  (which  is  gentlemanly,  ladylike)  and  their 
stiff  Vornehmheit.  Their  imagination  lacks  style,  training,  educa- 
tion, and  knowledge  of  the  world ;  it  has  an  ill-bred  air  even  in  its 
Sunday  dress.  The  race  is  poetical  and  intelligent,  but  common 
and  ill-mannered." 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  the  Germans  have  made 
great  progress  in  external  refinement  and  manners  since  their  lato 


524  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

war  with  France,  one  of  the  greatest  advantages  of  which  to 
them  was  that  it  destroyed  the  mystic  halo  which  had  for  many 
generations  surrounded  the  important  Parisian  Fashion  Fetish. 
What  the  Germans  need  now  is  a  period  of  Anglomania.  They 
have  already  ceased  to  laugh  at  the  Englishman  for  travelling  with 
his  bath-tub,  and  have  found  it  worth  while  to  provide  him  with 
that  commodity  in  the  hotels.  In  course  of  time  bath-tubs  in  pri- 
vate German  houses  may  be  expected  to  become  more  common 
than  they  are  now ;  and  after  a  generation  or  two  shall  have  given 
proper  attention  to  skin-hygiene,  freckles  and  other  cutaneous 
blemishes  will  be  less  prevalent  than  at  present.  In  their  houses 
the  Germans  are  really  as  tidy  as  any  nation  ;  but  their  indifference 
to  the  appearance  of  their  collars  and  cuffs  often  leads  one  to 
suspect  the  contrary. 

The  next  thing  the  Germans  ought  to  learn  of  the  English  is 
greater  gallantry  toward  the  women,  who  are  too  apt  to  be  looked 
upon  as  household  drudges,  whom  it  is  not  necessary  to  educate  or 
amuse.  Especially  ruinous  to  female  Beauty  is  the  hard  field 
labour  required  of  the  women  who  have  the  misfortune  to  belong' 
to  a  nation  which  has  not  yet  outgrown  its  condition  of  mediaeval 
militarism.  A  German  physician,  quoted  by  Dr.  Ploss,  notes  the 
fact  that  the  beauty  and  bloom  of  youth  last  but  a  short  time  with 
the  working  classes  of  North  Germany :  "  The  hard  labour  per- 
formed before  the  body  is  fully  developed  too  easily  destroys  the 
plumpness,  which  is  an  essential  element  of  beauty,  draws  furrows 
in  the  face,  and  makes  the  figure  stiff  and  angular.  Often  have  I 
taken  a  mother  who  showed  me  her  child  for  its  grandmother." 

The  author  of  German  Home  Life  remarks  in  a  similar  vein  : 
"  German  girls  are  often  charmingly  pretty,  with  dazzling  com- 
plexions, abundant  beautiful  hair,  and  clear  lovely  eyes ;  but  the 
splendid  matron,  the  sound,  healthy,  well-developed  woman,  who 
has  lost  no  grain  of  beauty,  and  yet  gained  a  certain  magnificent 
maturity  such  as  we  in  England  see  daily  with  daughters  who 
might  well  be  her  youngest  sisters — of  such  women  the  Fatherland 
has  few  specimens  to  show.  The  '  pale  unripened  beauties  of  the 
North  '  do  not  ripen,  they  fade."  And  no  wonder,  for  either  the 
girls  belong  to  the  poorer  classes  and  lose  their  beauty  prematurely 
from  overwork  ;  or,  if  they  are  of  the  well-to-do  classes,  they  get 
no  Beauty-preserving  exercise  at  all.  '•  German  girls,"  the 
Countess  Von  Bothmer  continues,  "  have  no  outdoor  amusements, 
if  we  except  skating  when  the  winter  proves  favourable.  Boating, 
riding,  archery,  swimming,  croquet — all  the  active,  healthy  out- 
door life  which  English  maidens  are  allowed  to  share  and  to  enjoy 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  BEAUTY  625 

with  their  brothers  is  unknown  to  them.  .  .  .  Such  diversions  are 
looked  upon  by  the  girls  themselves  as  bold,  coarse,  and  unfeminine. 
...  It  is  in  vain  that  you  tell  them  such  exercises,  far  from  un- 
sexing  them,  fit  them  all  the  better  for  the  duties  of  their  sex ;  it 
is  difficult  for  them  to  hear  you  out  and  not  show  the  scorn  they 
entertain  for  you." 

German  men,  as  a  rule,  are  much  handsomer  than  their  sisters, 
and  they  owe  this  superiority  partly  to  the  fact  that  their  minds 
are  not  so  vacant,  and  partly  to  the  prolonged  physical  training 
which  is  the  one  redeeming  feature  of  their  military  system. 
Nevertheless,  especially  in  South  Germany,  the  men  too  often  lose 
their  fine  manly  proportions  in  an  enormous  embonpoint,  the 
penalty  of  drinking  too  much  beer.  Nor  is  the  acquisition  of  a 
turnip  shape  the  only  bad  result  of  the  German  habit  of  spending 
every  evening  in  a  tavern.  The  air  in  these  beer-houses  is  so  filthy, 
so  soaked  with  vile  tobacco  smoke  and  nicotine,  that  after  sitting 
in  it  for  an  hour  the  odour  haunts  one's  clothes  for  a  week,  and 
poisons  the  lungs  for  a  month.  It  is  this  foul  atmosphere,  com- 
bined with  the  stupefying  effect  of  the  beer,  that  accounts  for 
German  heaviness  and  clumsiness  in  appearance,  attitude,  gait,  and 
literary  style. 

These  disadvantages  might  be  to  some  extent  neutralised  if,  on 
returning  to  his  bedroom,  the  German  would  spend  the  rest  of  the 
night,  at  least,  in  fresh  air.  But  no !  He  dreads  the  balmy  night 
air  as  he  would  a  dragon's  breath,  although  Professor  Reclam  and 
other  great  authorities  on  Hygiene  have  told  him  a  million  and 
sixty  times  that  night  air  is  more  salubrious  than  day  air,  except 
in  swampy  regions. 

Tourists  in  Switzerland  often  wonder  why  it  is  that  the  natives, 
notwithstanding  their  glorious  Alpine  air,  are,  with  rare  exceptions, 
so  utterly  devoid  of  Beauty.  Partly  this  is  due  to  the  hard  labour 
and  scanty  food  to  which  most  of  them  are  condemned ;  but  the 
main  reason  is  that  they  enjoy  their  health-laden  air  only  in  the 
daytime  and  in  summer.  At  night  and  in  winter  they  close  their 
windows  hermetically,  and  in  the  morning  the  atmosphere  in  such 
a  room  is  something  which  no  one  who  has  ever  breathed  it  will 
ever  forget. 

When  the  Germans  visit  Switzerland  they  carefully  imitate  the 
example  of  these  ignorant  peasants,  thus  depriving  themselves  of 
all  the  benefits  of  an  Alpine  tour.  An  eye-witness  last  summer 
told  me  of  the  following  encounter  in  a  Swiss  hotel  between  an 
English  lady  and  a  German.  The  dining-room  being  hot  to  suffo- 
cation, the  English  lady  opened  a  window,  whereupon  the  German 


526  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PEKSONAL  BEAUTY 

immediately  got  up  and  closed  it.  The  English  lady  opened  it 
again,  and  again  it  was  closed ;  whereupon  she  pushed  her  elbow 
through  the  glass,  and  thenceforth  enjoyed  the  fresh,  fragrant  air, 
to  the  horror  and  indignation  of  the  assembled  Teutons. 

All  these  remarks  of  course  apply  to  the  Germans  only  in  a  very 
general  way.  Among  all  classes  in  Germany  specimens  of  Beauty 
may  be  found  that  could  hardly  be  surpassed  anywhere  else. 
Pretty  faces  are  more  frequent  than  elegant  figures,  which  com- 
monly are  too  robust  and  masculine.  German  girls  are  the  most 
domestic  and  amiable  in  the  world,  and  it  is  their  amiability  and 
depth  of  feeling  that  gives  their  mouth  such  a  sweet  expression 
and  refined  outlines.  When  German  girls  are  educated,  as  often 
they  are  in  America,  their  faces  beam  in  irresistible  beauty.  The 
most  beautiful  non-Spanish  eyes  I  have  ever  seen  belonged  to  a 
girl  in  Baden  ;  and  the  most  roguish  blue  eyes  I  have  ever  seen, 
to  a  Wurtemberg  girl.  Regular  Italian  features  are  not  uncommon 
in  Bavaria,  although  snub-noses  are  most  frequent  there.  The 
Bavarian  complexion,  though  somewhat  too  pale,  is  beautifully 
clear ;  and  I  have  almost  come  to  the  conclusion  that  this  is  in  some 
way  connected  with  the  national  habit  of  drinking  beer  three  times 
a  day.  It  might  be  worth  while  to  inquire  whether  there  is  a 
beautifying  ingredient  in  beer  which  might  be  obtained  without  its 
stupefying  effects. 

The  Germans  commonly  consider  the  maidens  along  the  Ehine 
their  most  favourable  and  abundant  specimens  of  Beauty;  but 
Robert  Schumann,  who  had  a  fine  eye  for  feminine  Beauty,  em- 
phasised the  amiability  rather  than  the  beauty  of  these  maidens  in 
the  following  passage  from  one  of  his  private  letters :  "  What 
characteristic  faces  among  the  lowest  classes  !  On  the  west  shore 
of  the  Rhine  the  girls  have  very  delicate  features,  indicating 
amiability  rather  than  intelligence ;  the  noses  are  mostly  Greek, 
the  face  very  oval  and  artistically  symmetrical,  the  hair  brown.  I 
did  not  see  a  single  blonde.  The  complexion  is  soft,  delicate,  with 
more  white  than  red;  melancholy  rather  than  sanguine.  The 
Frankfort  girls,  on  the  other  hand,  have  in  common  a  sisterly  trait 
— the  character  of  German,  manly,  sad  earnestness  which  we  often 
find  in  our  quondam  free  cities,  and  which  toward  the  east 
gradually  merges  into  a  gentle  softness.  Characteristic  are  the 
faces  of  all  the  Frankfort  girls :  intellectual  or  beautiful  few  of 
them  ;  the  noses  mostly  Greek,  often  snub-noses ;  the  dialect  I  did 
not  like." 

Concerning  the  peasant  women  of  Saxony,  Mr.  Julian  Hawthorne 
remarks  in  his  Saxon  Studies:  "Massive  are  their  legs  as  the 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  BEAUTY  527 

banyan  root ;  their  hips  are  as  the  bows  of  a  three-decker.  Backs 
have  they  like  derricks  •  rough  hands  like  pile-drivers."  And 
again :  "  Handsome  and  pretty  women  are  certainly  no  rarity  in 
Saxony,  although  few  of  them  can  lay  claim  to  an  unadulterated 
Saxon  pedigree."  "  We  see  lovely  Austrians,  and  fascinating  Poles 
and  Russians,  who  delicately  smoke  cigars  in  the  concert  gardens. 
But  it  is  hard  for  the  peasant  type  to  rise  higher  than  comeliness  : 
and  it  is  distressingly  apt  to  be  coarse  of  feature  as  well  as  of 
hand,  clumsy  of  ankle,  and  more  or  less  wedded  to  grease  and  dirt. 
Good  blood  shows  in  the  profile ;  and  these  young  girls,  whose 
faces  are  often  pleasant  and  even  attractive,  have  seldom  an 
eloquent  contour  of  nose  and  mouth.  There  is  sometimes  great 
softness  and  sweetness  of  eye,  a  clear  complexion,  a  pretty  round- 
ness of  chin  and  throat.  Indeed,  I  have  found  scattered  through 
half  a  dozen  different  villages  all  the  features  of  the  true  Gretchen ; 
and  once,  in  an  obscure  hamlet  whose  name  I  have  forgotten,  I 
came  unexpectedly  upon  what  seemed  a  near  approach  to  the 
mythic  being." 

One  thing  must  be  admitted.  The  Germans  are  the  most 
systematic  and  persevering  nation  in  the  world.  They  took  music, 
for  instance,  from  her  Italian  cradle,  and  reared  her  till  she 
developed  into  the  most  fascinating  of  the  modern  muses.  They 
lead  the  world  in  scientific  research ;  and  within  a  few  years  they 
have  terrified  the  English  monopolists  by  a  sudden  outburst  of 
thorough-going  Teutonic  industrial  activity  and  world-competition. 
Let  but  the  Germans  once  make  up  their  mind  that  they  want 
Personal  Beauty,  and  lo !  they  will  have  it  in  superabundance. 
The  Professorships  of  Hygiene,  which  are  now  being  established  at 
the  Universities,  will  doubtless  bear  rich  fruit.  If  Bismarck  dis- 
covered the  full  significance  of  Anglo-American  Courtship,  he  would 
forthwith  order  an  hour  of  it  to  be  added  to  the  daily  academic 
curriculum ;  and  if  he  realised  the  importance  of  racial  mixture,  he 
would  order  shiploads  of  South  American  and  Andalusian  brunettes 
to  be  distributed  among  his  officers  as  wives.  Nor  would  female 
education  be  any  longer  neglected,  were  it  fully  understood  how 
essential  it  is  to  Personal  Beauty  and  true  Romantic  Love,  the 
basis  of  happy  conjugal  life. 

What  can  be  done  with  German  stock  if  it  is  duly  mixed  with 
Brunette  ingredients,  is  shown  at  Vienna,  which,  by  the  apparently 
unanimous  consent  of  tourists,  boasts  more  beautiful  women  than 
any  other  city  in  the  world.  Austria  has  about  ten  per  cent  more 
of  the  pure  Brunette  and  fourteen  per  cent  more  of  the  mixed  types 
than  Germany.  The  dark  blood  of  Italians,  Hungarians,  Czech*, 


528  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

flows  in  Viennese  veins,  and  there  is  also  a  piquant  suspicion  of 
Oriental  beauty.  The  Viennese  woman  combines  Andalusian 
plumpness  of  figure  and  grace  of  movement,  with  American  delicacy 
of  features  and  purity  of  complexion.  The  bust  is  almost  always 
finely  developed  and  rarely  too  luxuriant ;  and  the  joints  are  the 
admiration  of  all  tourists  and  natives.  Speaking  of  England,  Mr. 
Richard  Grant  White  says  that  "  Plump  arms  are  not  uncommon, 
but  really  fine  arms  are  rare ;  and  fine  wrists  are  still  rarer.  Such 
wrists  as  the  Viennese  women  have  ...  are  almost  unknown 
among  women  of  English  race  in  either  country."  And  the  Countess 
von  Bothmer  thus  describes  the  neighbours  of  Germany : — 

"Polish,  Hungarian,  and  Austrian  women,  whom  we,  in  a 
general,  inconclusive  way,  are  apt  to  class  as  Germans,  are  'beauti- 
ful exceedingly ' ;  but  here  we  come  upon  another  race,  or  rather 
such  a  fusion  of  other  races  as  may  help  to  contribute  to  the 
charming  result.  Polish  ladies  have  a  special,  vivid,  delicate, 
spirited,  haunting  loveliness,  with  grace,  distinction,  and  elegance 
in  their  limbs  and  features  that  is  all  their  own ;  you  cannot  call 
them  fragile,  but  they  are  of  so  fine  a  fibre  and  so  delicate  a 
colouring  that  they  only  just  escape  that  apprehension.  Of  Polish 
and  Hungarian  pur  sang  there  is  little  to  be  found ;  women  of 
the  latter  race  are  of  a  more  robust  and  substantial  build,  with 
dark  hair  and  complexion,  fine  flashing  eyes,  and  pronounced  type ; 
and  who  that  remembers  the  women  of  Linz  and  Vienna  will  refuse 
them  a  first  prize  1  They  possess  a  special  beauty  of  their  own,  a 
beauty  which  is  rare  in  even  the  loveliest  Englishwomen ;  rare, 
indeed,  and  exceptional  everywhere  else ;  a  beauty  that  the  artist 
eye  appreciates  with  a  feeling  of  delight.  They  have  the  most 
delicately  articulated  joints  of  any  women  in  the  world.  The 
juncture  of  the  hand  and  wrist,  of  foot  and  ankle,  of  the  nuque 
with  the  back  and  shoulders,  is  what  our  neighbours  would  call 
'  adorable.' 

"  But  alas  that  it  should  be  so  !  The  full  gracious  figures — 
types  at  once  of  strength  and  elegance — the  supple,  slender  waists, 
the  dainty  little  wrists  and  hands,  become  all  too  soon  hopelessly 
fat,  from  the  persistent  idleness  and  luxury  of  the  nerveless, 
unoccupied  lives  of  these  graceful  ladies." 


ENGLISH  BEAUTY 

Like  the  Viennese,  the  English  afford  an  illustration  of  what 
can  be  done  with  Teutonic  stock  by  a  judicious  admixture  of  dark 


ENGLISH  BEAUTY  529 

blood.  Although  the  mysteries  of  English  ethnology  have  not 
been  completely  unravelled,  the  original  inhabitants  of  the  British 
Islands  appear  to  have  been  "  composed  of  the  long-headed  dark 
races  of  the  Mediterranean  stock,  possibly  mingled  with  fragments 
of  still  more  ancient  races,  Mougoliform  or  Allophylian"  (Dr. 
Beddoe).  In  the  later  history  of  the  race  Romans,  Germans, 
Danes,  and  Normans  added  their  blood  to  this  mixture.  The 
Celtic-speaking  people  who  in  the  time  of  the  Roman  Conquest 
inhabited  South  Britain,  partook,  according  to  Dr.  Beddoe,  "  more 
of  the  tall  blond  stock  of  Northern  Europe  than  of  the  thickset, 
broad -headed,  dark  stock  which  Broca  has  called  Celts."  But  the 
true  Blonde  invasion  of  Britain  did  not  occur  till  towards  the  begin- 
ning of  the  fifth  century,  when  the  Low-Dutch  tribes,  the  Angles  and 
Saxons,  came  over  from  the  river  Elbe  and  the  coast  region,  and 
drove  the  Britons  to  the  west  of  the  island,  where  they  were  called 
the  Welsh,  which  is  an  old  German  appellation  for  foreigners. 

The  inference  naturally  suggests  itself  that  the  predilection  for 
Blondes  shown  in  English  literature  up  to  a  recent  date  (as  noted 
in  the  chapter  on  Blondes  and  Brunettes)  may  be  traced  to  this 
fact  that  the  conquering  race  was  fair,  and  that  consequently  dark 
hair  and  eyes  stigmatised  their  possessor  as  belonging  to  the 
conquered  race.  This  condemnation  of  the  Brunette  type  (on  non- 
cesthetic  grounds,  be  it  noted)  is  forcibly  illustrated  by  the  following 
lines  of  the  shepherdess  Phebe  in  As  You  Like  It — 

"  I  have  more  cause  to  hate  him  than  to  love  him  ; 

For  what  had  he  to  do  to  chide  at  me  ? 
He  said  mine  eyes  were  black  and  my  hair  black, 
And,  now  I  am  remember' d,  scorned  at  me." 

But  when  this  temporary  aristocratic  ground  of  preferring  the 
Blond  type  was  neutralised  through  the  lapse  of  time,  and 
Romantic  Love,  that  potent  awakener  of  the  {esthetic  sense, 
appeared  on  the  scene  and  opened  men's  eyes  to  the  inferior  beauty 
of  that  type,  then  began  the  reaction  in  favour  of  Brunettes,  which 
has  been  going  on  ever  since.  This  view  is  strikingly  confirmed 
by  the  following  remarks  of  Mr.  Charles  Roberts  in  Nature,  January 
7,  1885  :— 

"  American  statistics  show  that  the  blonde  type  is  more  subject 
to  all  the  diseases,  except  one  (chronic  rheumatism),  which  dis- 
qualify men  for  military  service,  and  this  must  obviously 
place  blondes  at  a  great  disadvantage  in  the  battle  of  life, 
while  the  popular  saying,  *  A  pair  of  black  eyes  is  the  delight  of 
a  pair  of  blue  ones/  shows  that  sexual  selection  does  not  allow 
them  to  escape  from  it  It  is  more  than  probable,  therefore,  from 

2  M 


580  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

all  these  considerations,  that  the  darker  portion  of  our  population 
is  gaining  on  the  blond,  and  this  surmise  is  borne  out  by  Dr. 
Beddoe's  remark  that  the  proportion  of  English  and  Scotch  blood 
in  Ireland  is  probably  not  less  than  a  third,  and  that  the  Gaelic 
and  Iberian  races  of  the  West,  mostly  dark-haired,  are  tending  to 
swamp  the  blond  Teutonic  of  England  by  a  reflex  migration." 

Obviously,  the  ideal  Englishwoman  of  the  future  will  be  a 
Brunette.  Thackeray  had  a  prophetic  vision  of  her  when  he 
described  Beatrix  Esmond :  "  She  was  a  brown  beauty :  that  is, 
her  eyes,  hair,  and  eyebrows  and  eyelashes  were  dark;  her  hair 
curling  with  rich  undulations,  and  waving  over  her  shoulders" 
[note  that] ;  "  but  her  complexion  was  as  dazzling  white  as  snow 
in  sunshine ;  except  her  cheeks,  which  were  a  bright  red,  and  her 
lips,  which  were  of  a  still  deeper  crimson  ...  a  woman  whose 
eyes  were  fire,  whose  look  was  love,  whose  voice  was  the  sweetest 
love-song,  whose  shape  was  perfect  symmetry,  health,  decision, 
activity,  whose  foot  as  it  planted  itself  on  the  ground  was  firm  but 
flexible,  and  whose  motion,  whether  rapid  or  slow,  was  always 
perfect  grace, — agile  as  a  nymph,  lofty  as  a  queen — now  melting; 
now  imperious,  now  sarcastic — there  was  no  single  movement  of 
hers  but  was  beautiful.  As  he  thinks  of  her,  he  who  writes  feels 
young  again  and  remembers  a  paragon." 

Sexual  Selection,  however,  has  not  limited  its  efforts  to  the 
improvement  of  the  colour  of  the  hair,  eyes,  and  complexion ;  the 
form  of  the  features  and  figure  has  also  been  gradually  altered  and 
refined.  An  examination  of  the  portraits  in  the  National  Gallery 
showed  to  Mr.  Galton  "  what  appear  to  be  indisputable  signs  of 
one  predominant  type  of  face  supplanting  another.  For  instance, 
the  features  of  the  men  painted  by  and  about  the  time  of  Holbein 
have  unusually  high  cheek-bones,  long  upper  lips,  thin  eyebrows, 
and  lank  dark  [?]  hair.  It  would  be  impossible,  I  think,  for  the 
majority  of  modern  Englishmen  so  to  dress  themselves,  and  clip 
and  arrange  their  hair,  as  to  look  like  the  majority  of  these  por- 
traits." And  again :  "  If  we  may  believe  caricaturists,  the  fleshi- 
ness and  obesity  of  many  English  men  and  women  in  the  earlier 
years  of  this  century  must  have  been  prodigious.  It  testifies  to 
the  grosser  conditions  of  life  in  those  days,  and  makes  it  improbable 
that  the  types  best  adapted  to  prevail  then  would  be  the  best 
adapted  to  prevail  now." 

Yet  this  improvement  in  the  British  figure  and  physiognomy  is 
far  from  universal.  The  English  are  beyond  all  dispute  the  finest 
race  in  the  world,  physically  and  mentally;  but  the  favourable 
action  of  the  four  Sources  of  Beauty,  to  which  they  owe  this 


ENGLISH  BEAUTY  531 

supremacy,  does  Dot  extend  to  all  classes.  The  lowest-class  Eng- 
lishman or  Irishman  is  the  most  hideous  and  brutal  ruffian  in  the 
world.  Of  Mental  or  Moral  Culture  not  a  trace;  and  whereas 
"  the  Spaniard,  however  ignorant,  has  naturally  the  manners  and 
the  refined  feelings  of  a  gentleman  "  (Macmillan's  Magazine,  1874), 
as  well  as  a  love  of  the  beautiful  forms  and  colours  of  nature ;  the 
Englishman  of  the  corresponding  class  has  nerves  and  senses  sc 
coarse  that  he  is  absolutely  impervious  to  any  impressions  which 
do  not  come  under  the  head  of  mere  brutal  excitement.  In  this 
class  there  is  no  Mixture  of  Races,  but  a  worse  than  barbarian 
promiscuity ;  Romantic  Love  is  of  course  miles  beyond  the  concep- 
tion of  imaginations  so  filthy  and  sluggish ;  and  Hygienic  neglect 
here  finds  its  most  hideous  examples  in  the  Western  World. 

In  his  English  Note-Books  Hawthorne  speaks  as  follows  of  "  a 
countless  multitude  of  little  girls  "  taken  from  the  workhouses  and 
educated  at  a  charity  school  at  Liverpool :  "  I  should  not  have  con- 
ceived it  possible  that  so  many  children  could  have  been  collected 
together,  without  a  single  trace  of  beauty  or  scarcely  of  intelligence 
in  so  much  as  one  individual ;  such  mean,  coarse,  vulgar  feature? 
and  figures  betraying  unmistakably  a  low  origin,  and  ignorant  and 
brutal  parents.  They  did  not  appear  wicked,  but  only  stupid, 
animal,,  and  soulless.  It  must  require  many  generations  of  better 
life  to  wake  the  soul  in  them.  All  America  could  not  show  the 
like." 

"  Climate,"  he  says  in  another  place,  "  no  doubt  has  most  to  do 
with  diffusing  a  slender  elegance  over  American  young  women ;  but 
something,  perhaps,  is  also  due  to  the  circumstance  of  classes  not 
being  kept  apart  there  as  they  are  here :  they  interfuse  amid  the 
continual  ups  and  downs  of  our  social  life ;  and  so,  in  the  lowest 
stations  of  life,  you  may  see  the  refining  influence  of  gentle  blood." 

Taine,  in  his  Notes  on  England,  thus  sketches  the  lowest  of 
the  Englishmen :  "  Apoplectical  and  swollen  faces,  whereof  the 
scarlet  hue  turns  almost  to  black,  worn-out,  bloodshot  eyes  like  raw 
lobsters ;  the  brute  brtitalised.  Lessen  the  quantity  of  blood  and 
fat,  while  retaining  the  same  bone  and  structure,  and  increasing  the 
countrified  look ;  large  and  wild  beard  and  moustache,  tangled  hair, 
rolling  eyes,  truculent  muzzle,  big,  knotted  hands;  this  is  the 
primitive  Teuton  issuing  from  his  woods ;  after  the  portly  animal, 
after  the  overfed  animal,  comes  the  fierce  animal,  the  English  bull." 
"  The  lower-class  women  of  London,"  says  another  French  writer, 
Mr.  Max  O'Rell,  "are  thin-faced  or  bloated -looking.  They  are 
horribly  pale ;  there  is  no  colour  to  be  seen  except  on  the  tips  of 
their  noses." 


532  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Personal  Beauty  in  England  diminishes  in  quality  and  frequency, 
not  only  as  we  go  from  the  upper  to  the  lower  classes,  but  also  if 
we  leave  London  and  go  to  other  cities.  How  far  sanitary  and 
educational  differences  account  for  this  state  of  affairs,  and  how 
much  is  due  to  a  habitual  and  natural  immigration  of  Beauty  to  a 
place  where  it  is  most  sure  of  appreciation,  it  is  not  easy  to  say. 
Hawthorne  thus  records  the  impression  made  on  his  artistic  eyes 
by  an  excursion  party  of  Liverpool  manufacturing  people  :  "  They 
were  paler,  smaller,  less  wholesome-looking,  and  less  intelligent, 
and,  I  think,  less  noisy  than  so  many  Yankees  would  have  been. 
.  .  .  As  to  their  persons,"  the  women  "generally  looked  better 
developed  and  healthier  than  the  men ;  but  there  was  a  woeful 
lack  of  beauty  and  grace, — not  a  pretty  girl  among  them,  all  coarse 
and  vulgar.  Their  bodies,  it  seems  to  me,  are  apt  to  be  very  long 
in  proportion  to  their  limbs — in  truth,  this  kind  of  make  is  rather 
characteristic  of  both  sexes  in  England." 

A  French  writer,  quoted  by  Figuier,  Dr.  Clavel,  makes  a  similar 
statement :  "  The  level  plains,  which  are  as  a  rule  met  with  in 
England,  are  not  favourable  to  the  development  of  the  lower  extremi- 
ties, and  it  is  a  fact  that  the  power  of  the  English  lies,  not  so 
much  in  their  legs,  as  in  the  arms,  shoulders,  and  loins.  .  .  .  The 
barely-marked  nape  of  his  neck  and  the  oval  form  of  his  cranium 
indicate  that  Finn  blood  flows  in  his  veins ;  his  maxillary  power 
and  the  size  of  his  teeth  evidence  a  preference  for  an  animal  diet. 
He  has  the  high  forehead  of  the  thinker,  but  not  the  long  eyes  of 
the  artist.  ...  In  dealing  craftily  with  his  antagonist,  he  is  well 
able  to  guard  himself  against  the  weaknesses  of  feeling.  His  face 
rarely  betrays  his  convictions,  and  his  features  are  devoid  of  the 
mobility  which  would  prove  disadvantageous." 

The  English  woman,  according  to  the  same  writer,  "  is  tall,  fair, 
and  strongly  built.  Her  skin  is  of  dazzling  freshness ;  her  features 
are  small  and  elegantly  formed ;  the  oval  of  her  face  is  marked, 
but  it  is  somewhat  heavy  toward  the  lower  portion ;  her  hair  is  fine, 
silky,  and  charming ;  and  her  long  and  graceful  neck  imparts  to 
the  movements  of  her  head  a  character  of  grace  and  pride.  So  for 
all  about  her  is  essentially  feminine ;  but  upon  analysing  her  bust 
and  limbs  we  find  that  the  large  bones,  peculiar  to  her  race,  inter- 
fere with  the  delicacy  of  her  form,  enlarge  her  extremities,  and 
lessen  the  elegance  of  her  postures  and  the  harmony  of  her  move- 
ments. .  .  .  She  lacks  a  thousand  feminine  instincts,  and  this  lack 
is  revealed  in  her  toilette,  the  posture  she  assumes,  and  in  her 
actions  and  movements." 

M.  Taine  also  was  convinced  of  the  frequent  lack  of  taste  in 


ENGLISH  BEAUTY  533 

dress  and  bearing  in  Englishwomen.  Yet  it  is  noticeable,  and 
cannot  be  too  much  emphasised,  that  he  goes  to  Spain  and  not  to 
France  for  a  comparison :  "  Compared  with  the  supple,  easy,  silent, 
serpentine  undulation  of  the  Spanish  dress  and  bearing,  the  move- 
ment here  (in  England),  is  energetic,  discordant,  jerking,  like  a 
piece  of  mechanism."  Nor  does  Taine  in  other  respects  venture  to 
hold  up  his  own  countrywomen  as  models.  He  repeatedly  refers  to 
the  superior  beauty  of  the  English  complexion  :  "  Many  ladies  have 
their  hair  decked  with  diamonds,  and  their  shoulders,  much 
exposed,  have  the  incomparable  whiteness  of  which  I  have  just 
spoken,  the  petals  of  a  lily,  the  gloss  of  satin  do  not  come  near  to 
it."  And  though  he  thinks  that  ugliness  is  more  ugly  in  England 
than  in  France,  he  confesses  that  "  generally  an  Englishwoman  is 
more  thoroughly  beautiful  and  healthy  than  a  Frenchwoman." 
"  Out  of  every  ten  young  girls  one  is  admirable,  and  upon  five  or 
six  a  naturalist  painter  would  look  with  pleasure."  "  Lady  Mary 
Wortley  Montague,  who  came  to  see  the  Court  of  the  Regent  in 
France,  severely  rallied  our  slim,  painted,  affected  beauties,  and 
proudly  held  up  as  a  contrast  '  the  natural  charms  and  the  lively 
colours  of  the  unsullied  complexions'  of  Englishwomen."  "The 
physiognomy  remains  youthful  here  much  later  than  amongst  us, 
especially  than  at  Paris,  where  it  withers  so  quickly ;  sometimes  it 
remains  open  even  in  old  age ;  I  recall  at  this  moment  two  old 
ladies  with  white  hair  whose  cheeks  were  smooth  and  softly  rosy ; 
after  an  hour's  conversation  I  discovered  that  their  minds  were  as 
fresh  as  their  complexions.  Even  when  the  physiognomy  and  the 
form  are  commonplace,  the  whole  satisfies  the  mind ;  a  solid  bony 
structure,  and  upon  it  healthy  flesh,  constitute  what  is  essential  in 
a  living  creature." 

That  is  it  precisely.  The  Englishman  is  the  finest  animal  in 
the  world ;  and  it  is  because  other  nations  so  often  forget  that  one 
must  be  a  fine  animal  before  one  can  be  a  fine  man,  that  the 
English  have  outstripped  them  in  colonising  the  world,  and 
imposing  on  it  their  special  form  of  culture  and  manners.  As 
Emerson  remarks,  in  his  Essay  on  Beauty,  "  It  is  the  soundness 
of  the  bones  that  ulti mates  itself  in  the  peach-bloom  complexion ; 
health  of  constitution  that  makes  the  sparkle  and  the  power  of  the 
eye."  "  We  are  all  entitled  to  beauty,  should  have  been  beautiful, 
if  our  ancestors  had  kept  the  laws, — as  every  lily  and  every  rose 
is  well." 

The  London  Times  characteristically  speaks  of  "  that  worst  of 
sins  in  English  eyes — uncleanliness  " ;  and  it  is  in  England  alone 
of  all  European  countries  that  cleanliness  is  esteemed  ne*t  to 


534  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

godliness.  The  Frenchman's  paradoxical  exclamation,  "What  a 
dirty  nation  the  English  must  be  that  they  have  to  bathe  so 
often  ! "  is  not  so  funny  as  it  seems.  The  English,  as  can  be  seen 
in  the  uneducated  classes,  would  be  the  dirtiest  people  in  the 
world,  thanks  to  their  fogs  and  smoke,  if  they  were  not  the  most 
cleanly.  It  is  the  magic  of  tub  and  towel  that  has  compelled  M. 
Figuier  to  admit  that  although  the  Englishwomen  "  do  not  offer 
the  noble  appearance  and  luxurious  figure  of  the  Greek  and  Roman 
women,"  yet  "  their  skins  surpass  in  transparency  and  brilliancy 
those  of  the  female  inhabitants  of  all  other  European  countries." 

It  is  needless  to  dilate  on  the  other  hygienic  habits  to  which 
the  English  owe  their  Health,  notwithstanding  their  often  depress- 
ing climate, — the  passion  for  walking  and  riding,  for  tennis, 
boating,  and  other  sports,  which,  moreover,  have  the  advantage  of 
bringing  the  sexes  together,  and  enabling  every  Romeo  to  find  his 
Juliet.  One  cannot  help  admiring  the  independence  and  common 
sense  of  the  respectable  London  girls  who  go  home  on  the  top  of 
the  'bus,  enjoying  the  fresh  air  and  varied  sights,  instead  of  being 
locked  up  in  the  foul-aired  interior.  1  hey  know  very  well,  these 
clever  girls,  that  their  cheeks  will  be  all  the  rosier,  their  smiles 
more  bewitching,  their  eyes  more  sparkling  after  such  a  ride.  In 
countries  where  there  are  fewer  gentlemen  such  a  thing  would  be 
considered  as  improper  for  a  girl  as  it  is  for  a  man  to  give  a  girl  a 
chance  to  choose  her  own  husband.  Do  the  French  agree  with 
the  Turks  that  women  have  no  souls,  since,  in  Taine's  words,  a 
Frenchman  "  would  consider  it  indelicate  to  utter  a  single  clear  or 
vague  phrase  to  the  young  girl  before  having  spoken  to  her 
parents  "  1  Taine  imparts  to  his  countrymen  the  curious  informa- 
tion that  in  England  men  and  women  marry  for  Love,  but  he  does 
not  appear  to  realise  how  much  of  their  superior  Beauty — which 
he  acknowledges — they  owe  to  the  habitual  privilege  of  choosing 
their  own  wives  for  their  personal  charms,  instead  of  having  them 
selected  by  their  parents  for  their  money  value.  He  does,  how- 
ever, realise  the  effect  this  sj^tem  of  courtship  has  on  conjugal 
life ;  for  in  his  History  of  English  Literature  he  refers  to  the 
Englishwoman's  extreme  "sweetness,  devotion,  patience,  inex- 
tinguishable affection, — a  thing  unknown  in  distant  lauds,  and  in 
France  especially ;  a  woman  here  gives  herself  without  drawing 
back,  and  places  her  glory  and  duty  in  obedience,  forgiveness, 
adoration,  wishing  and  pretending  only  to  be  melted  and  absorbed 
daily  deeper  and  deeper  in  him  whom  she  has  freely  and  for  ever 
chosen." 

And  there  is  another  English  custom  the  value  of  which  Taine 


AMERICAN  BEAUTY  636 

realises  and  acknowledges :  "  In  France  we  believe  too  readily," 
he  says,  "  that  if  a  woman  ceases  to  be  a  doll  she  ceases  to  be  a 
woman."  True,  it  is  only  a  decade  or  two  since  the  superstition 
that  a  higher  education  would  "  destroy  all  the  feminine  graces  " 
has  been  successfully  combated  even  in  England ;  but  there  has 
always  been  a  vast  amount  of  home  education,  and  the  girls  have 
profited  immensely  by  the  unimpeded  opportunity  of  meeting  the 
young  men  and  talking  with  them,  and  by  the  fact  that  the  purity 
of  tone  which  pervades  English  literature  has  made  all  of  it 
accessible  to  them.  Hence  the  charming  intellectual  lines  which 
may  be  traced  in  an  English  woman's  face. 

What  the  English  still  need  is  gastronomic  and  aesthetic  train- 
ing. After  a  few  generations  of  sense-refinement  the  lower  part 
of  the  English  face  will  become  as  perfect  as  the  upper  part  is 
now.  Cultivation  of  the  fine  arts  and  freer  facial  expression  of 
the  emotions  are  the  two  great  cosmetics  which  will  put  the 
finishing  touch  on  English  Beauty. 


AMERICAN  BEAUTY 

England  and  America — which  of  these  two  countries  has  the 
most  beautiful  women,  and  which  the  largest  number  of  them  ? 
Few  questions  of  international  diplomacy  have  been  more  frequently 
discussed  than  these  problems  in  comparative  aesthetics.  But  as 
in  most  cases  patriotism  has  taken  the  place  of  aesthetic  judgment 
in  forming  a  verdict,  few  tangible  results  have  been  reached. 
There  is  too  much  exaggeration.  Many  English  tourists  have 
denied  that  there  is  any  remarkable  Beauty  at  all  in  the  United 
States,  and  Americans  have  said  the  same  of  England. 

If  these  sceptical  Englishmen  had  only  spent  an  hour  on  either 
side  of  the  New  York  and  Brooklyn  Bridge  at  6  P.M.,  they  would 
have  seen  Beauty  enough  to  bewilder  all  their  senses ;  and  if  the 
American  sceptics,  next  time  they  go  to  London,  will  spend  a 
shilling  in  buying  penny  stamps  at  a  dozen  of  those  small  post- 
offices  so  profusely  scattered  all  over  the  city,  they  will  see  enough 
feminine  Beauty  in  an  hour  to  make  them  wish  to  stay  in  London 
the  rest  of  their  life, — especially  if  they  remember  that  an 
advertisement  for  eleven  girls  to  fill  these  postal  clerkships  has 
been  answered  by  as  many  as  2000, — the  majority  of  whom, 
presumably,  were  as  good-looking  as  those  who  got  the  places, 
since  postal  clerks  are  riot  selected  for  their  Beauty,  but  for  their 
intelligence  and  efficiency. 


636  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

A  few  specimens  of  the  sweeping  generalisations  of  tourists 
may  here  be  cited.  According  to  Richard  Grant  White,  "The 
belief,  formerly  prevalent,  that  *  American*  women  had  in  their 
youth  pretty  doll  faces,  but  at  no  period  of  life  womanly  beauty  of 
figure,  is  passing  away  before  a  knowledge  of  the  truth,  and  I 
have  heard  it  scouted  here  by  Englishmen,  who,  pointing  to  the 
charming  evidence  to  the  contrary  before  their  eyes,  have  expressed 
surprise  that  the  travelling  bookwriters  .  .  .  could  have  so  mis- 
represented the  truth."  Yet  the  same  author  indulges  in  the 
following  absurdly  extravagant  statement :  "  Beauty  is  very  much 
commoner  among  women  of  the  English  race  than  among  those  of 
any  other  with  which  I  am  acquainted ;  and  among  that  race  it 
is  commoner  in  America  than  in  England.  I  saw  more  beauty  of 
face  and  figure  at  the  first  two  receptions  which  I  attended  after 
my  return  than  I  had  found  among  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
women  whom  I  had  seen  in  England." 

The  late  Dr.  G.  M.  Beard,  though  an  acute  observer,  allowed 
his  patriotism  a  still  more  ludicrous  sway  over  his  imagination : 
"  It  is  not  possible,"  he  says,  "  to  go  to  an  opera  in  any  of  our 
large  cities  without  seeing  more  of  the  representatives  of  the 
highest  type  of  female  beauty  than  can  be  found  in  months  of 
travel  in  any  part  of  Europe  ! " 

Possibly  Sir  Lepel  Griffin  had  read  these  lines  when  he  was 
moved  to  pen  the  following  counter-extravagances  :  "  More  pretty 
faces  are  to  be  seen  in  a  day  in  London  than  in  a  month  in  the 
States.  The  average  of  beauty  is  far  higher  *n  Canada,  and  the 
American  town  in  which  most  pretty  women  are  noticeable  is 
Detroit,  on  the  Canadian  border,  and  containing  many  Canadian 
residents.  In  the  Western  States  beauty  is  conspicuous  by  its 
absence,  and  in  the  Eastern  towns,  Baltimore,  Philadelphia,  New 
York,  and  Boston,  it  is  to  be  chiefly  found.  In  New  York,  in 
August,  I  hardly  saw  a  face  which  could  be  called  pretty.  .  .  . 
In  November  New  York  presented  a  different  appearance,  and 
many  pretty  women  were  to  be  seen,  although  the  number  was 
comparatively  small ;  and  at  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House  even 
American  friends  were  unable  to  point  out  any  lady  whom  they 
could  call  beautiful.  A  distinguished  artist  told  me  that  when 
he  first  visited  America  he  scarcely  saw  in  the  streets  of  New 
York  a  single  face  which  he  could  select  as  a  model,  though  he 
could  find  twenty  such  in  the  London  street  in  which  his  studio 
was  situated." 

Volumes  might  be  filled  with  similai  unscientific  generalisa- 
tions, but  it  would  be  a  waste  of  space.  My  own  general 


AMERICAN  BEAUTY  W7 

Impression  is  that  there  are  more  pretty  girls  in  America,  and 
more  beautiful  women  in  England;  that  the  average  English- 
woman has  a  finer,  healthier  figure  and  colour,  the  American 
greater  mobility  and  finer  chiselling  of  the  features.  If  English 
hands  and  feet  are  often  somewhat  large,  American  hands  are  just 
as  often  too  small, — the  greater  blemish  of  the  two,  because  it 
usually  goes  with  too  thin  limbs.  Irish  girls  of  the  best  classes 
appear  to  be  intermediate.  Some  of  the  finest  figures  and  faces 
in  the  world  belong  to  them;  an  Andalusian  could  hardly  be 
more  plump  and  graceful  than  many  Irish  and  Irish-American 
girls.  The  Scotch,  in  the  opinion  of  Hawthorne,  "  are  a  better- 
looking  people  than  the  English  (and  this  is  true  of  all  classes), 
more  intelligent  of  aspect,  with  more  regular  features,  I  looked 
for  the  high  cheek-bones,  which  have  been  attributed,  as  a 
characteristic  feature,  to  the  Scotch,  but  could  not  find  them. 
What  most  distinguishes  them  from  the  English  is  the  regularity 
of  the  nose,  which  is  straight,  and  sometimes  a  little  curved 
inward;  whereas  the  English  nose  has  no  law  whatever,  but 
disports  itself  in  all  manner  of  irregularity.  I  very  soon  learned 
to  recognise  the  Scotch  face,  and  when  not  too  Scotch,  it  is  a 
handsome  one." 

Comparative  ^Esthetics  is  still  in  its  infancy,  and  many  years 
will  doubtless  elapse  before  it  will  become  an  exact  science,  in 
place  of  a  collection  of  individual  opinions  based  on  vague  im- 
pressions. The  statistics  which  have  lately  been  collected  regard- 
ing the  proportion  of  Blondes  and  Brunettes  in  various  countries, 
may  be  regarded  as  the  beginning  of  such  a  science.  The  next 
step  should  be  the  collection  of  a  series  of  national  composite 
portraits  after  the  manner  in  which  Mr.  Galton  has  formed  typical 
faces  of  criminals,  etc.  If  in  each  country  a  number  of  indi- 
viduals of  pronounced  national  aspect  were  photographed  on  the 
same  plate,  the  result  would  be  a  picture  which  would  emphasise 
the  typical  national  traits,  and  enable  one  to  judge  how  far  they 
deviate  in  each  case  from  regular  Beauty. 

In  most  European  countries  it  would  be  comparatively  easy  to 
obtain  characteristic  composite  portraits  of  this  kind.  But  in 
America  the  difficulties  would  perhaps  be  insurmountable.  For 
there  the  mixture  of  nationalities  is  too  great  and  too  recent  to 
have  produced  any  national  type.  The  women  of  Baltimore,  New 
York,  Boston,  and  San  Francisco — what  have  they  in  common 
with  one  another  any  more  than  with  their  cousins  in  London  1 
Almost  one-third  of  the  inhabitants  of  New  York  are  foreign- 
born,  including  about  half  a  million  Irish  and  Germans.  A  fusion 


638  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

of  these  has  been  going  on  for  generations,  while  others  have  re- 
tained their  national  traits ;  and  to  look,  therefore,  for  a  special 
type  of  New  York  Beauty  would  be  absurd.  Thanks  to  this 
large  number  of  foreigners — not  always  of  the  most  desirable 
classes — there  is  less  Beauty  in  New  York  in  proportion  to  the 
number  of  inhabitants  than  in  most  other  cities  of  the  United 
States.  When  people  imagine  they  can  tell  from  what  American 
city  a  given  woman  comes,  they  are  hardly  ever  influenced  in 
their  judgment  by  physiognomy  or  figure,  but  by  peculiarities  of  dress, 
speech,  or  manner. 

Dr.  Weir  Mitchell  says  that  in  America  you  may  see  cc  many 
very  charming  faces,  the  like  of  which  the  world  cannot  match — 
figures  somewhat  too  spare  of  flesh,  and,  especially  south  of 
Rhode  Island,  a  marvellous  littleness  of  hand  and  foot.  But  look 
farther,  and  especially  among  New  England  young  girls;  you 
will  be  struck  with  a  certain  hardness  of  line  in  form  and  feature, 
which  should  not  be  seen  between  thirteen  and  eighteen  at  least. 
And  if  you  have  an  eye  which  rejoices  in  the  tints  of  health, 
you  will  miss  them  on  a  multitude  of  the  cheeks  which  we  are  now 
so  daringly  criticising."  The  notion  that  there  is  too  much 
angularity  of  outline  in  New  England  faces  and  forms  is  a  wide- 
spread one,  and  to  some  extent  founded  on  truth ;  yet  many  of 
the  plumpest,  rosiest,  and  most  charming  American  women  come 
from  Boston — as  if  to  make  amends  for  their  antipodes,  whom 
Mr.  R.  G.  White  describes  as  "  certain  women,  too  common  in 
America,  who  seem  to  be  composed  in  equal  parts  of  mind  and 
leather,  the  elements  of  body  and  soul  being  left  out,  so  far  as  is 
compatible  with  existence  in  human  form." 

Concerning  the  multitudinous  mixture  of  nationalities  in  the 
United  States  one  thing  may  be  asserted  confidently :  that  the 
finest  ingredient  in  it  is  the  English.  Yet  it  has  long  been  held 
that  the  English  blood  deteriorates  in  the  United  States  ;  that  the 
descendants  of  the  English,  like  those  of  the  Germans  and  other 
nations  and  their  mixtures,  gradually  lose  the  sound  constitution 
of  their  ancestors.  Hawthorne,  in  his  Scarlet  Letter^  was  pro- 
bably one  of  the  first  to  give  expression  to  this  belief.  Speaking 
of  the  New  England  women  who  two  centuries  ago  waited  for  the 
appearance  of  Hester,  he  says :  "  Morally,  as  well  as  materially, 
there  was  a  coarser  fibre  in  those  wives  and  maidens  of  old 
English  birth  and  breeding  than  in  their  fair  descendants,  sepa- 
rated from  them  by  a  series  of  six  or  seven  generations ;  for 
throughout  that  chain  of  ancestry  every  successive  mother  has 
transmitted  to  her  child  a  fainter  bloom,  a  more  delicate  and 


AMERICAN  BEAUTY  639 

briefer  beauty,  and  a  slighter  physical  frame,  if  not  a  character  of 
less  force  and  solidity,  than  her  own.  .  .  .  The  bright  morning 
sun,  therefore,  shone  on  broad  shoulders  and  well-developed  busts, 
and  on  round  and  ruddy  cheeks,  that  had  ripened  in  the  far-off 
island,  and  had  hardly  yet  grown  paler  or  thinner  in  the  atmosphere 
of  New  England. 

Yet  in  his  English  Note-Books,  written  after  the  Scarlet  Letter, 
he  relates  that  he  had  a  conversation  with  Jenny  Lind  :  "  She 
talked  about  America,  and  of  our  unwholesome  modes  of  life,  as 
to  eating  and  exercise,  and  of  the  ill -health  especially  of  our 
women ;  but  I  opposed  this  view  as  far  as  I  could  with  any  truth, 
insinuating  my  opinion  that  we  were  about  as  healthy  as  other 
people,  and  affirming  for  a  certainty  that  we  live  longer.  .  .  . 
This  charge  of  ill- health  is  almost  universally  brought  forward 
against  us  nowadays, — and,  taking  the  whole  country  together,  I 
do  not  believe  the  statistics  will  bear  it  out."  But  why  does  he 
in  another  place  speak  of  English  rural  people  as  "  wholesome  and 
well-to-do, — not  specimens  of  hard,  dry,  sunburnt  muscle,  like  our 
yeoman  "  ?  and  on  still  another  page  :  "  In  America,  what  squeam- 
ishness,  what  delicacy,  what  stomachic  apprehension,  would  there 
not  be  among  three  stomachs  of  sixty  or  seventy  years'  experi- 
ence !  I  think  this  failure  of  American  stomachs  is  partly  owing 
to  our  ill-usage  of  our  digestive  powers,  partly  to  our  want  of 
faith  in  them." 

Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  exclaims  that  "the  race  of 
strong,  hardy,  cheerful  girls  ...  is  daily  lessening ;  and,  in  their 
stead,  come  the  fragile,  easy-fatigued,  languid  girls  of  a  modern 
age,  drilled  in  book-learning,  ignorant  of  common  things."  Dr. 
E.  H.  Clarke  writes  in  his  Sex  and  Education,  which  should  be 
read  by  all  parents :  "  *  I  never  saw  before  so  many  pretty  girls 
together/  said  Lady  Amberley  to  the  writer,  after  a  visit  to  the 
public  schools  of  Boston;  and  then  added,  'They  all  looked 
sick.'  Circumstances  have  repeatedly  carried  me  to  Europe, 
where  I  am  always  surprised  by  the  red  blood  that  fills  and 
colours  the  faces  of  ladies  and  peasant  girls,  reminding  one  ot 
the  canvas  of  Rubens  and  Murillo ;  and  I  am  always  equally 
surprised  on  my  return  by  crowds  of  pale,  bloodless,  female  faces, 
that  suggest  consumption,  scrofula,  anaemia,  and  neuralgia." 

Dr.  S.  Weir  Mitchell  remarks  that  "To-day  the  American 
woman  is,  to  speak  plainly,  physically  unfit  for  her  duties  as 
woman."  Dr.  Allen,  quoted  by  Sir  Lepel  Griffin,  remarks  that  a 
majority  of  American  women  "have  a  predominance  of  nerve 
tissue,  with  weak  muscles  and  digestive  organs";  and  Mr.  William 


540  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Blaikie  says  that  "  scarcely  one  girl  in  three  ventures  to  wear  a 
jersey,  mainly  because  she  knows  too  well  that  this  tell-tale  jacket 
only  becomes  a  good  figure." 

Dr.  Clarke  relates  that  when  travelling  in  the  East  he  was 
summoned  as  a  physician  into  a  harem  where  he  had  the  privilege 
of  seeing  nearly  a  dozen  Syrian  girls :  "  As  I  looked  upon  their 
well-developed  forms,  their  brown  skins,  rich  with  the  blood  and 
sun  of  the  East,  and  their  unintelligent  sensuous  faces,  I  thought 
that  if  it  were  possible  to  marry  the  Oriental  care  of  woman's 
organisation  to  the  Western  liberty  and  culture  of  her  brain, 
there  would  be  a  new  birth  and  loftier  type  of  womanly  grace  and 
form." 

'There  is,  doubtless,  much  truth  in  these  assertions.  It  is  dis- 
tressing to  see  the  thin  limbs  of  so  many  American  children,  and 
.the  anaemic  complexions  and  frail,  willowy  forms  of  so  many 
maidens.  What  the  American  girl  chiefly  needs  is  more  muscle, 
more  exercise,  more  fresh  air.  A  large  proportion  of  girls,  it  is 
true,  become  invalids  because  their  employers  in  the  shops  never 
allow  them  to  sit  down  and  rest ;  and  standing,  as  physiologists 
tell  us,  and  as  has  been  proved  in  the  case  of  armies,  is  twice  as 
fatiguing  as  walking.  As  if  to  restore  the  balance,  therefore,  the 
average  well-to-do  American  girl  never  walks  a  hundred  yards  if  a 
street  car  or  'bus  is  convenient ;  and  the  men,  too,  are  not  much 
better  as  a  rule.  One  of  the  most  disgusting  sights  to  be  seen 
in  New  York  on  a  fine  day  is  a  procession  of  street  cars  going  up 
Broadway,  crowded  to  suffocation  by  young  men  who  have 
plenty  of  time  to  walk  home.  In  the  case  of  the  women,  the 
cramping  French  fashions,  which  impede  exercise,  are  largely  to 
blame. 

Fresh-air  starvation,  again,  is  almost  as  epidemic  in  America  as 
in  Germany.  Although  night  air  is  less  dreaded,  draughts  are 
quite  as  much ;  and  people  imagine  that  they  owe  their  constant 
"  colds  "  to  the  cold  air  with  which  they  come  into  contact,  whereas 
it  is  the  excessively  hot  air  in  their  rooms  that  makes  them  morbidly 
sensitive  to  a  salubrious  atmosphere.  If  young  ladies  knew  that 
the  hothouse  air  of  their  parlours  has  the  same  effect  on  them  as 
on  a  bunch  of  flowers,  making  them  wither  prematurely,  they 
would  shun  it  as  they  would  the  sulphurous  fumes  of  a  volcano. 
Why  should  they  deliberately  hasten  the  conversion  of  the  plump, 
smooth  grape  into  a  dull,  wrinkled  raisin  1 

It  is  through  their  morbid  fondness  for  hothouse  air  and  their 
indolence  that  American  women  so  often  neutralise  their  natural 
advantages :  thanks  to  the  fusion  of  nationalities  and  the  un- 


AMERICAN  BEAUTY  641 

impeded  sway  of  Romantic  Love,  they  are  born  more  beautiful 
than  the  women  of  any  other  nation;  but  the  beauty  does  not 
last. 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  a  vast  improvement  has 
been  effected  within  the  last  two  generations.  Beyond  all  doubt 
the  young  girls  of  fifteen  are  to-day  healthier  and  better-looking 
than  were  their  mothers  at  the  same  age.  It  is  no  longer  fashion- 
able to  be  pale  and  frail.  Anglomania  has  done  some  good  in 
introducing  a  love  of  walking,  tennis,  etc.,  as  well  as  the  habit  of 
spending  a  large  part  of  the  year  in  the  country. 

Mr.  Higginson,  Mr.  R.  G.  White,  and  many  others,  have  in- 
sisted on  this  gradual  improvement  in  the  health  and  physique  of 
Americans;  and  Dr.  Beard  remarks  in  his  work  on  American 
Nervousness:  "During  the  last  two  decades  the  well-to-do  classes 
of  America  have  been  visibly  growing  stronger,  fuller,  healthier. 
We  weigh  more  than  our  fathers;  the  women  in  all  our  great 
centres  of  population  are  yearly  becoming  more  plump  and  more 
beautiful.  ...  On  all  sides  there  is  a  visible  reversion  to  the 
better  physical  appearance  of  our  English  and  German  ancestors. 
.  .  .  The  one  need  for  the  perfection  of  the  beauty  of  the  American 
women — increase  of  fat — is  now  supplied."  Yet  the  one  cosmetic 
which  20  per  cent  of  American  women  still  need  above  all  others 
is  the  ability  to  eat  food  which  they  scorn  as  "greasy,"  but  which 
is  only  greasy  when  badly  prepared.  It  is  to  such  food  that  Italian 
and  Spanish  women  owe  their  luscious  fulness  of  figure. 

Dr.  Clarke's  work  on  Sex  and  Education  made  a  great  sensa- 
tion because  he  pointed  out  that  the  ill-health  of  American  women 
is  largely  due  to  the  brain-work  imposed  on  them  at  school.  Now 
the  superior  beauty  of  American  women  is  admittedly  largely  due 
to  the  intelligent  animation  of  their  features,  to  the  early  training 
of  their  mental  faculties.  Is  this  advantage  to  be  sacrificed  ]  Dr. 
Clarke's  argument  does  not  point  to  any  such  conclusion.  He 
simply  contended  that  the  methods  of  female  education  were  in- 
jurious. "The  law  has,  or  had,  a  maxim  that  a  man  and  his  wife 
are  one,  and  that  the  one  is  the  man.  Modern  American  educa- 
tion has  a  maxim,  that  boys'  schools  and  girls'  schools  are  one, 
aud  that  the  one  is  the  boys'  school."  Girls  need  different  studies 
from  boys  to  fit  them  for  their  sphere  in  life ;  and  above  all  they 
need  careful  hygienic  supervision  and  periods  of  rest. — Dr.  Clarke's 
book  affords  many  irrefutable  arguments  in  favour  of  one  of  the 
main  theses  of  the  present  treatise :  that  the  tendency  of  civilisa- 
tion is  to  differentiate  the  sexes,  mentally  and  physically.  It  is 
on  this  differentiation  that  the  ardour  and  the  cosmetic  power  of 


542  ROMANTIC  LOVE  AND  PERSONAL  BEAUTY 

Romantic  Love  depend.  Hence  the  hopelessness  of  the  Virago 
Woman's  Rights  Cause,  especially  in  America,  where  the  women 
are  more  thoroughly  feminine  than  elsewhere.  It  is  said  that 
when  the  first  female  presidential  candidate  announced  a  lecture 
in  a  western  town,  not  a  single  auditor  appeared  on  the  scene. 
American  women,  evidently,  are  in  no  immediate  danger  of  becom- 
ing masculine  and  ceasing  to  inspire  Love. 

Women,  however,  must  be  educated  and  thoroughly,  for  it 
has  been  abundantly  shown  in  the  preceding  pages  that  only  an 
educated  mind  can  feel  true  Romantic  Love.  But  their  education 
should  be  feminine.  They  need  no  algebra,  Greek,  and  chemistry. 
What  they  need  is  first  of  all  a  thorough  knowledge  of  Physiology 
and  Hygiene,  so  that  they  may  be  able  to  take  care  of  the  Health 
and  Beauty  of  their  children.  Then  they  should  be  well  versed  in 
literature,  so  as  to  be  able  to  shine  in  conversation.  Their  artistic 
eye  should  be  trained,  to  enable  them  to  teach  their  children  to  go 
through  the  world  with  their  eyes  open.  Most  of  us  are  half 
blind ;  we  cannot  describe  accurately  a  single  person  or  thing  we 
see.  Music  should  be  taught  to  all  women,  as  an  aid  in  making 
home  pleasant  and  refined,  and  as  an  antidote  to  care.  Natural 
history  is  another  useful  feminine  study  which  enlarges  the  sym- 
pathies by  showing,  for  example,  that  birds  love  and  marry  almost 
as  we  do,  wherefore  it  is  barbarous  to  wear  their  stuffed  bodies  on 
one's  hat. 

Education,  Intermarriage,  Hygiene,  and  Romantic  Love  will 
ultimately  remove  the  last  traces  of  the  ape  and  the  savage  from 
the  human  countenance  and  figure.  Climate  will  perhaps  always 
continue  to  modify  different  races  sufficiently  to  afford  the  ad- 
vantages of  cross- fertilisation  or  intermarriage.  The  remarkable 
fineness  of  the  American  complexion,  for  instance,  has  been  ascribed 
to  climatic  influences,  and  with  justice  it  seems,  for,  according  to 
Schoolcraft,  the  skin  of  the  native  Indians  is  not  only  smoother, 
but  more  delicate  and  regularly  furrowed  than  that  of  Europeans. 
The  notion,  however,  that  the  climate  is  tending  to  make  the 
American  like  the  Indian  in  feature  and  form  is  nonsensical  The 
typical  "  Yankee  "  owes  his  high  cheek-bones  and  lankness  to  his 
indigestible  food ;  his  thin  colourless  lips  to  his  Puritan  ancestry 
and  lack  of  aesthetic  culture. 

Even  if  climate  did  possess  the  power  to  modify  the  forms  of 
our  features,  it  would  not  be  allowed  to  have  its  own  way  where 
these  modifications  conflicted  with  the  laws  of  Beauty.  Science  is 
daily  making  us  more  and  more  independent  of  crude  "fend  cruel 
Natural  Selection,  and  of  the  advantages  of  physical  conformity 


AMERICAN  BEAUTY 


543 


to  our  surroundings.  Hence  Sexual  Selection  has  freer  scope  to 
modify  the  human  race  into  harmony  with  aesthetic  demands. 
Perhaps  the  time  will  come  when  the  average  man  will  have  as 
refined  a  taste  and  as  deep  feelings  as  a  few  favoured  individuals 
have  at  present ;  that  epoch  will  be  known  as  the  age  of  Romantic 
Love  and  Personal  Beauty. 


INDEX 


ABOUT,  E. :  fashionable  disease,  510 

Absence  :  effect  on  Love,  256 

Addison :  familiarity,  184,  258 

^Esthetic  sense  :  developed  from  utili- 
tarian associations,  336  ;  training 
the,  340  ;  highest  product  of  civil- 
isation, 409,  479 

-Esthetic  suicide,  388,  390 

Affection,  impersonal,  11-16 ;  for 
dismal  scenery,  13 

Affections,  Personal :  love  for  ani- 
mals, 16-19  ;  maternal  love,  19  ; 
paternal,  20  ;  filial,  22  ;  brotherly 
and  sisterly,  23  ;  friendship,  24 ; 
romantic  love,  26  ;  differentiation 
of,  180 

Age :  which  preferred  by  Cupid,  303  ; 
beauty  of  old,  334  ;  and  decrepi- 
tude, 334  ;  ears  in  old,  430 ;  eye- 
brows, 474  ;  hair,  489,  493 

Air  :  fresh,  3]  7  ;  necessary  to  Beauty, 
186,  319,  397,  426,  446,  447,  492, 
515 

Albinos,  468,  501 

Alcock,  Dr. :  colour  of  tropical  man, 
456 

Alfieri :  first  love,  204,  214 

Alison  :  on  taste,  451 

Allen,  Grant :  origin  of  aesthetic 
sense,  336 

Amazons,  191 

Ambidexterity,  408,  444 

American  beauty,  177,  300;  South 
American,  319 ;  quadroons,  321  ; 
rapid  development  of,  326 ;  feet 
362 ;  frank  gaze,  481,  531,  535-543 ; 
complexion,  542 

American  Love :  courtship,  118 ; 
flirtation,  122,  126;  Gallantry, 
158;  and  Beauty,  177;  at  eighteen, 

o 


193  ;  replaces  German  and  French 
courtship,  288,  294-301 
Amicis,  E.  de :  Spanish  beauty,  517 
Amiel,  H.  F. :  on  Germans,  523 
Animals :   love  for,   16 ;   ignored  in 
Christian  ethics,  18  ;  love  among, 
33 ;   jealousy,   39,    128 ;    kissing, 
227,  229  ;  as  tests  of  Beauty,  331 ; 
arctic,  why  white,  456 
Apes,  caressing,   225 ;   kissing,  225, 
228  ;  ugliness  of,  333  ;  feet,  355, 
359 ;  gait,  357  ;  legs,  371 ;  abdo- 
men, 385 ;  arms,  402  ;  hands,  405 ; 
jaws,    409  ;    nude  patches,    487 ; 
hair,  492 
Apollo,  490 
Arabian  beauty,  516 
Aryan  Love,  ancient,  72 
Asceticism  and  ugliness,  314 
Augustine,   St. :    love  and  jealousy, 

128 
Austrian  beauty,  319,  516 

BACH,  A.  B. :  chest-exercise   399 

Bachelors,  194 

Bacon :  friendship,  25  ;  amorous 
hyperbole,  162 ;  celibacy  and 
genius,  197;  love  and  genius, 
207  ;  employment  versus  love,  257 

Bain,  Prof.,  225,  341,  346. 

Baldness,  492 

Ballet-dancing,  370 

Ballrooms:  unhealthy,  364,  402; 
for  birds,  365 

Balzac :  prolonging  Love,  218 ;  how 
his  love  was  won,  252 ;  hand  of 
great  men,  405 

"Bangs,"  388,  495 

Banting,  384 

Bathing,  461,  518,  524,  534 


546 


INDEX 


Beard,  G.  M. ;  diet,  384;  eyeball, 
476  ;  American  beauty,  536,  541 

Beard,  the,  489 

Beauty,  in  flowers,  origin  of,  8  ;  de- 
pendent on  Health  and  Cross-ferti- 
lisation, 10 

Beauty,  Personal :  the  aesthetic  over- 
tone of  Love,  32 ;  admiration  of, 
by  animals,  43  ;  by  savages,  59  ; 
among  Hebrews,  72 ;  Hindoos,  74 ; 
Greeks,  83  ;  Romans,  88  ;  medi- 
aeval, 108  ;  feminine  versus  mascu- 
line strength,  115;  arouses  jealousy, 
133 ;  when  only  skin-deep,  155  ; 
and  intellect,  155  ;  refines  Love, 
177-180;  feminine,  in  masculine 
eyes,  177 ;  masculine,  in  feminine 
eyes,  178  ;  neglected  after  marriage, 
185 ;  lost  prematurely,  186  ;  "skin- 
deep,"  190 ;  elimination  of  ugly 
and  masculine  women,  190 ;  fatal 
to  bachelors,  194 ;  physical,  a  source 
of  Love,  303 ;  facial,  304  ;  depen- 
dent on  Health,  310  ;  independent 
of  utility,  311  ;  Greek,  313 ;  in- 
creased through  Hygiene,  316,  335  ; 
effect  of  crossing  on,  318  ;  Jews, 
320 ;  quadroons,  321 ;  increased 
through  Love,  322,  323  ;  as  a  fine 
art,  329,  417;  tests  of,  negative, 
331 ;  positive,  338 ;  human  less 
frequent  than  animal,  391 ;  lost  in 
degradation,  333  ;  and  age,  334  ; 
expression  versus  form,  349  ;  pro- 
portion, 354  ;  feet,  355,  361  ;  value 
of  exercise,  362,  403  ;  lower  limbs, 
371 ;  Hygiene  and  civilisation,  372, 
394 ;  lacing  fatal  to,  381,  382 ; 
corpulence,  383  ;  rare,  387  ;  chest, 
394,  396  ;  increased  by  deep-breath- 
ing, 399  ;  neglect  of,  a  sin,  400  ; 
neck  and  shoulder,  400 ;  finger- 
nails, 406;  jaw,  408 ;  characteristic, 
411  ;  dimples,  412 ;  lips,  413 ; 
cheeks,  423  ;  colour  and  blushes, 
425  ;  ears,  429  ;  noses,  440  ;  Greek, 
440  ;  arm  and  hand,  405,  408  ;  cos- 
metic value  of  gastronomy,  446 ; 
of  fragrant  air,  447  ;  of  sunlight, 
460,  462  ;  skin,  453,  458,  488  ; 
eyes,  464  et  seq.,  516  ;  beards  aud 
moustaches,  489  ;  sexual  selection 
preserves  hair,  492  ;  sensuous,  of 
eyes,  480  ;  of  hair,  492,  493  ;  versus 


Fashion,  387,  496  ;  Brunette  versus 
Blonde,  496  ;  national  traits,  505  ; 
race-mixture  and  Love,  508  ;  and 
mental  culture,  324,  520 ;  stature, 
520  ;  beautiful  and  pretty,  521 

Beauty-sleep,  317 

Beauty-spots,  452 

Beddoe,  Dr.  :  brunettes  and  blondes, 
499  ;  races  of  Britain,  529 

Beer,  525,  526 

Beethoven:  Love -affairs,  210,  212, 
217 

Bell,  Sir  Charles:  the  lips,  227; 
Greek  beauty,  349  ;  woman's  gait, 
373  ;  facial  expression,  414 ;  beards, 
490 

Bella  donna,  504 

Berlioz  :  love-affairs,  199,  206 

Birds :  affections  of,  35  ;  intermar- 
riages, nuptial  mass  meetings,  37  ; 
courtship,  38  ;  love -dances,  39, 
52 ;  jealousy,  39  ;  coyness,  40 ; 
choice  of  a  mate,  42 ;  source  of 
colours,  44  ;  love-calls,  51  ;  female 
seeks  male,  51 ;  display  of  orna- 
ments, motives  of,  52 ;  aesthetic 
taste  of,  53  ;  murdered  for  vulgar 
women,  150  ;  billing,  230 

Blaclde,  Prof.  :  Goethe's  love-affairs, 
212 

Blaikie,  W.  :  American  physique,  540 

Blind,  why  love  is,  164,  202 

Blonde  versus  Brunette,  496,  529 

Blushes,  425  ;  eyes  of  Albinos,  468 

Bodenstedt :  Oriental  women,  185  ; 
Georgian  women,  325 

Bones,  410 

Bothmer,  Countess  von  :  French  Love, 
269,  270  ;  German  women,  283  ; 
English  flirtation,  293 

Brain,  the,  449,  522 

Braudes,  Georg:  feminine  Love  at 
thirty,  193,  197 

Breath,  offensive,  423 

Breathing,  healthy,  380  ;  deep,  magic 
effects  of,  397,  447 

Brinton  and  Napheys,  379,  421,  432, 
444,  484 

Brotherly  and  sisterly  love,  23 

Browne,  Lennox  :  corset  ruins  grace, 
382  ;  consumption,  399 

Brunette  versus  Blonde,  305,  496, 
513,  520,  526,  529 

Bryant,  254 


INDEX 


547 


Biicbner,  L.,  534 

Bulkley,  Dr.  :  care  of  skin,  460 ;  re- 
moving  hairs,  493 

Bunyan:  kissing,  234 

Burke :  delicacy,  343  ;  smoothness, 
344 ;  neck  and  breasts,  394  ;  love 
and  stature,  521 

Burns :  Love  and  cosmic  attraction, 
6  ;  amorous  hyperbole,  162  ;  first 
love,  205  ;  ardour  of  his  love,  208  ; 
fickleness,  211  ;  undercurrents, 
213  ;  a  lover's  dream,  220  ;  kissing, 
231 

Burton,  4,  259 

Bustle,  the,  375,  494 

Buxton,  259 

Byron,  Lord  :  affection  for  mountains, 
13  ;  epitaph  on  dog,  17  ;  woman's 
Love,  121  ;  waltzing,  129  ;  the 
coquette,  142  ;  Romantic  Love, 
163  ;  love-affairs,  202  ;  first  love, 
204  ;  a  poet's  love,  210  ;  Swift, 
210  ;  kissing,  236  ;  refusals,  241  ; 
how  to  win  love,  243,  252  ;  sarcasm 
on  marriage,  259  ;  money  and 
"love,"  263;  Italian  Love,  274; 
Love  inspired  by  inferior  beauty, 
305  ;  black  eyes,  498 ;  Italian 
beauty,  512 

CALDERWOOD  :  on  affection,  11 

Calisthenics,  397 

Campbell,  Sir  G. ;  Aryan  cheekbones, 

424 

Camper's  angle,  449 
Canada :    Love-matches  and  Beauty, 

178,  373,  510 
Capture  of  women,  56 
Caresses,  225 
Carew,  256 
Celibacy :  mediaeval  notions  of,   92 ; 

bachelors,  195  ;  and  genius,  197 
Cervantes,  202,  280 
Chamfort,  224 
Chaperonage  :  in  Greece,  77 ;  Home, 

87  ;  mediaeval,  103  ;  modern,  119 ; 

126,  174, 181, 186, 192  ;  in  France, 

193,  266  et  seq.;  England,  268,  293  ; 

Italy,  274  ;  Spain,  277  ;  Germany, 

285  ;  America,  294,  296 
Characteristic,  the,  410 
Cheeks,  423  ;  colour  and  blushes,  425 
Chemical  affinities,  3-6 
Chest,  the,  304,  394,  397 


Chesterfield:  birth  of  "flirtation," 
124;  flattery,  245 

Children  :  head,  449  ;  eyes,  480 

Childs,  Mrs. :  Love  and  marriage,  122 

Chin,  412 

China :  Love  in,  118  ;  jealousy,  129, 
133  ;  aristocracy  of  intellect,  210  ; 
standard  of  Beauty,  328  ;  mutila- 
tion of  the  feet,  352;  dancing, 
366  ;  cheeks,  423  ;  eyes,  473,  483, 
485 

Chiromancy,  406 

Chivalry :  militant  and  comic,  98 ; 
poetic,  101 

Choice,  sexual.  See  Individual  Pre- 
ference 

Chopin  :  musician  for  lovers,  170 

Christianity  and  Love,  97  ;  sympathy, 
149  ;  and  Beauty,  323 

Circassian  women,  320,  427 

City  air,  447  j  city  life,  injurious  to 
health,  372 

Civilisation  :  and  Beauty,  424 ;  and 
noise,  434 

Clarke,  E.  H. :  American  Health  and 
Beauty,  539  ;  sex  and  education, 
541 

Clavel,  Dr. :  English  Beauty,  532 

Cleanliness,  96,  364,  533 

Climate,  542 

Clough,  227 

"Colds,"  540 

Coleridge :  fruitless  Love,  121  ;  best 
marriages,  190  ;  virtue  and  passion, 
218  ;  compliments,  245 ;  love  and 
absence,  256 

Collier,  Miss  M.  ;  Italian  Love  and 
Hygiene,  512 

Collier,  B.  L.  :  English  and  American 
courtship,  292 

Colour :  a  normal  product,  propor- 
tionate to  vitality,  44;  Typical  and 
Sexual,  44 ;  Protective  and  Warn- 
ing, 48 ;  means  of  recognition  of 
species,  49 ;  complementary,  172, 
345  ;  in  cheeks,  425  ;  ears,  432 ; 
skin,  453,  488;  of  man's  skin, 
original,  456  ;  eyes,  465,  478 

Complementary  qualities :  colours, 
172  ;  guide  Love,  272,  305 

Complexion  :  white  versus  black,  453; 
Scandinavian  and  Spanish,  459 ; 
cosmetic  hints,  460  ;  freckles,  462  ; 
brunette  versus  blonde,  500,  526  ; 


6*8 


INDEX 


English,  533,  534  ;  injured  by  hot 
air,  540 

Compliments,  244 

Confidence,  value  of,  to  lovers,  239, 
242 

Conjugal  love :  among  animals,  34 ; 
savages,  182 ;  Hebrews,  69 ;  Greeks, 
75 ;  Romans,  86  ;  troubadours,  102; 
self-sacrifice,  160 ;  in  France,  162  ; 
differs  from  Romantic,  180  et  seq.  ; 
modern,  182 ;  essence  of,  183 ; 
feminine  deeper  than  masculine, 
186  ;  and  friendship,  258 

Constable,  167 

Consumption,  nurseries  of,  399 

Coquetry:  in  birds,  40;  and  flirta- 
tion, 122;  historic  excuse  for,  124; 
essence  of,  142 ;  masculine,  142 ; 
and  high  collars,  242 

Corpulence,  304,  382  ;  how  to  reduce, 
384 ;  in  old  England,  530 

Corset :  fatal  to  Beauty,  379  et  seq.  ; 
causes  corpulence,  382, 385 ;  ruins 
chest,  400 

Cosmetic  hints  (see  also  Hygiene  and 
Exercise) :  how  to  refine  the  lips, 
421 ;  ears,  431  ;  odours,  445  ;  com- 
plexion, 460,  464  ;  electricity,  464; 
eyelashes,  484  ;  eyes,  485 ;  hair, 
491  ;  scalp,  493 ;  colour  of  eyes, 
504  ;  fresh  air,  513 

Cosmic  attraction,  3-6 

Costume,  study  of,  495 

Court-plaster,  452 

Courts  of  Love,  103 

Courtship :  among  animals,  37 ;  facilit- 
ated by  love-calls,  50  ;  display  of 
ornaments,  53;  among  savages,  56; 
Hebrews,  70;  Greeks,  77;  Plato 
on,  78 ;  advice  to  mediaeval  girls, 
106  ;  definition  and  value  of,  118  ; 
playing  at,  122  ;  modern,  125,  126, 
173 ;  mediaeval,  239  ;  French, 
268  ;  Italian,  275  ;  Spanish,  278  ; 
German,  282 ;  American  and  English, 
288,  292,  294,  299 ;  the  object  of 
dancing,  364 ;  needed  iu  France, 
509  ;  Germany,  527 

Cousins :  Love  and  kissing,  235 ;  as 
chaperons,  297 

Coyness  :  an  overtone  of  Love,  30  ; 
among  animals,  40 ;  among  primitive 
maidens,  64 ;  Hindoos,  74 ;  Greeks, 
77 ;  mediaeval,  100 ;  modem,  114 ;  et 


aeq.;  a  feminine  weapon,  115 ;  dis- 
advantages of,  118 ;  lessens  woman's 
Love,  119  ;  displaced  by  flirtation, 
122  ;  of  fate,  170  ;  after  marriage, 
185 ;  varies,  253  ;  how  to  overcome, 
254  ;  needed  in  Germany,  285 

Crimes,  against  Health  and  Beauty, 
400,  419 

Criminal  types,  324 

Crinoline  craze,  the,  376 

Cross -fertilisation :  advantages  to 
Health  and  Beauty,  8,  318 

Crossing,  306  ;  a  source  of  Beauty, 
318 

Crowe  and  Cavalcaselle,  274 

"  Cunning  to  be  strange,"  115 

Cupid's  arrows,  84 

Curing  Love,  art  of:  154,  196,  255  ; 
absence,  256;  travel,  257;  employ- 
ment, 257  ;  contemplation  of 
married  misery,  257  ;  of  feminine 
inferiority,  260 ;  focussing  her 
faults,  262  ;  reason  versus  passion, 
263  ;  Love  versus  Love,  264 

Curvature,  341,  355,  371,  379,  381, 
393,  396,  400,  413,  473,  474 

DANCING  :  love-dances  of  birds,  39, 
52  ;  and  grace,  364  ;  and  courtship, 
365  ;  birds,  365  ;  Greeks  and  Rom- 
ans, 366  ;  why  men  no  longer  care 
for,  367  ;  evolution  of  dance-music, 
367 ;  dance  of  Love,  369 ;  ballet, 
370 

Dante,  2,  109,  168,  198,  201,  215, 
420 

Darwin  :  on  flowers  and  insects,  7  ; 
benefactor  of  animals,  18  ;  birds, 
35  ;  animal  jealousy,  39  ;  coyness, 
40 ;  sexual  selection,  43 ;  love 
charms  and  calls,  50  ;  birds  dis- 
playing their  ornaments,  53  ; 
English  Beauty,  145;  female  tender- 
ness, 150  ;  masculine  females,  190 ; 
expression  of  Love,  224 ;  amorous 
desire  for  contact,  225 ;  origin  of 
kissing,  229  ;  feminine  inferiority, 
260 ;  taste,  326 ;  symmetry  in 
nature,  338 ;  bird  dances  and  court- 
ship, 365;  Hottentot  bustle,  or 
steatopyg,  375 ;  jaws  and  hands, 
409  ;  lip  mutilations,  416  ;  expres- 
sion of  emotions,  418 ;  Siamese 
notions  of  Beauty,  423  ;  blushing, 


INDEX 


427 ;  Albinos,  501  ;  movements  of 
ears,  430,  433 ;  point  of,  431 ; 
mutilations,  432  ;  the  nose,  436 ; 
sense  of  smell,  446  ;  Indian  heads, 
450  ;  movements  of  the  scalp,  452: 
complexion,  455  ;  eyebrows,  474 ; 
loss  of  man's  hair,  486 

Darwinism,  new  proof  for,  389 

Decrepitude,  334 

Deformity  :  fatal  to  Love,  304  ;  elim- 
ination of,  323 

Degradation  :  a  cause  of  ugliness,  333 

Delicacy,  343,  410,  413 

Depilatories,  492 

De  Quincy:  inferiority  of  feminine 
imagination,  261 

Diagnosis  of  Love,  254 

Diderot :  effects  of  Love,  242 

Dimples,  405,  412 

Disease  :  kills  Love,  304  ;  a  cause  of 
ugliness,  334,  341  ;  resulting  from 
tight  shoes,  354  ;  from  lacing,  380, 
381 ;  hollow  eyes,  473 ;  and 
Fashion,  510,  541 

Display  of  ornaments,  by  animals, 
52 

Don  Juans,  among  birds,  36 

Draughts,  stupid  fear  of,  317 

Dray  ton,  167 

Dress,  improprieties  of,  380  ;  woman's 
for  woman,  388  ;  in  France,  510 

Dryden :  on  Love,  89,  166 ;  Love 
versus  Love,  264 

Diihriug,  Dr.  :  German  money-mar- 
riages, 282 

Ditrer,  481 

EARS  :  a  useless  ornament,  429  ; 
physiognomic  theories,  432 

Eckstein  :  antiquity  of  Love,  1 

Education  of  Girls,  156  ;  the  right 
kind,  195,  261 ;  effect  of,  on  Beauty, 
324,  541,  542 

Egypt :  Love  in,  67 

Electricity,  as  a  cosmetic,  464.  493, 
505 

Eliot,  George  :  on  first  Love,  138 

Elopements,  61,  188 

Elson,  L.  C. :  Troubadours  and  Min- 
nesingers, 104 

Emerson :  poetry  and  science,  9 ; 
lovers'  sympathy,  31 ;  on  lovers, 
134  ;  amorous  hyperbole,  163,  165, 
241 ;  balm  for  rejected  lovers,  255  ; 


ocular  expression,  475  ;  Health  and 
Beauty,  533 

Emotional  differentiation,  180 

Empedokles,  3,  180 

Engagements,  293 ;  broken,  300 

English  Beauty,  145;  feet,  359,  862; 
open-air  games,  373  ;  mouths  and 
chins,  419 ;  nose,  442  ;  beards, 
489  ;  Brunettes  gaining  on  Blondes, 
499  ;  physique,  507,  509,  528  seq. 

English  Love:  courtship,  118;  flirta- 
tion, 122,  126,  193,  196  ;  kissing, 
233,  237,  283-294 ;  Goldsmith  on, 
299 

Epicures :  why  handsome,  446 

Erasmus  :  kissing  in  England,  233 

Ei-otomania,  222 

Evolution  of  Love,  111,  173,  180, 
181 ;  of  Beauty,  327  ;  of  taste, 

327  ;  great  toe,  359 
Exaggeration  :    characteristic  of  had 

taste,  61 

Exolusiveness  :  amorous.  See  Mono- 
poly 

Exercise :  effects  on  Beauty,  186,  313, 
372  ;  reduces  fatness  but  increases 
muscle,  384,  403 ;  in  France,  509, 
520,  525 

Exogamy,  56 

Expression :  improves  form  of  features, 
155  ;  facial,  of  Love,  224  ;  of  lips, 
227;  of  Beauty,  327,  347-352; 
mouth,  409  ;  i'acial,  414,  458  ;  of 
vice,  418  ;  of  lust,  418  ;  ears,  433 ; 
eyes,  470,  475  ;  dog's  tail,  491  ; 
Italian,  513 

Eyes,  164,  262;  smiling,  415;  the 
most  beautiful  feature,  464  ;  colour 
of,  465  ;  lustre,  469  ;  form,  472  ; 
lashes  and  brows,  474,  503,  483  ; 
expression  of,  479  ;  movements  of 
iris,  475  ;  of  eyeball,  480  ;  of  lids, 
482  ;  of  brows,  484  ;  "  making 
eyes,"  491 ;  dark  versus  light,  503  ; 
Spanish,  516,  517 

FACE,  the,  411,  448,  490 

Factories  :  unhealthy,  400  ;  whistles, 

434 
Fashion  :  the  Handmaid  of  Ugliness, 

328  ;  a  disease,  352  ;  mutilates  the 
feet,  352,  360  ;  frustrates  advant- 
ages of  dancing,    365  ;    prescribes 
absurd    hours,    367  ;     its    essence 


550 


INDEX 


vulgar  exaggeration,  375  ;  crinoline 
craze,  375  ;  wasp-waist  mania,  379  ; 
lacing,  380 ;  Fashion  Fetish 
analysed,  385 ;  and  Darwinism, 
389  ;  repeats  itself,  389  ;  ludicrous 
features,  390;  masculine,  391, 
393 ;  disgusting  pictures,  393 ; 
deforms  the  breasts,  395  ;  finger- 
nails, 406;  gloves,  407;  right- 
handedness,  408 ;  teeth,  415 ; 
powders  and  paints,  425,  458,  459 ; 
ears,  432  ;  noses,  436,  443  ;  versus 
Taste,  437;  forehead,  431,  450, 
451 ;  court-plaster,  452 ;  eyebrows, 
474  ;  hollow  eyes,  483  ;  mutilates 
eyes,  485 ;  head-dresses,  494  ; 
tyranny  of  ugliness,  496  ;  in 
France,  509 ;  and  bad  manners, 
510 

Fat,  cosmetic  value  of,  120, 132 

Feet,  the :  size,  351  ;  fashionable 
ugliness,  352 ;  tests  of  Beauty,  354  ; 
not  enlarged  by  graceful  walking, 
362 

Feminine  Beauty  :  in  masculine  eyes, 
177  ;  prematurely  lost,  186,  312  ; 
rarer  than  masculine,  313  ;  greater 
than  masculine,  342  ;  bosom,  342, 
394,  400,  403;  face,  411;  nose, 
441  ;  forehead,  388,  448,  496 ; 
wrinkles,  451  ;  skin,  488  ;  beard, 
489,  521 

Feminine  Inferiority,  260,  262,  274 

Feminine  Love  :  less  deep  than  mascu- 
line, 120,  273  ;  desire  to  please, 
159;  dynamic,  not  aesthetic,  178, 
253,  303;  at  thirty,  193;  expression 
of,  224  ;  lessens  delicacy,  254 ; 
Fichte  on,  284,  401 

Feminine  virtues,  98 ;  mediaeval 
culture,  105  ;  cruelty,  150  ;  devo- 
tion, 160 

Femininity,  standard  of,  290 

Fichte  :  feminine  Love,  284 

Fickleness  of  genius,  210 

Figuier,  458,  506,  509,  511,  517 

Figure :  a  good,  inspires  Love,  154 ; 
Oriental,  540  ;  plump,  541 

Filial  Love,  22 

Finger-nails,  406 

Fletcher,  167 

Flirtation  and  coquetry,  122 ;  defini- 
tion of,  123;  versus  coyness,  123;  in 
France,  273 ;  in  Spain,  278 ;  Ger- 


many, 285 ;  England,  293  ;  with 
the  eyes,  484,  491 

Flower  love  and  beauty,  7-11 

Flower,  Prof. :  walking,  358  ;  toes, 
359  ;  nose-rings,  443 

Forehead,  the,  388,  411  ;  Beauty  and 
brain,  448  ;  fashionable  deformity, 
450,  496 

Fragrance,  a  tonic,  447 

France :  the  source  of  vulgar  Fashions, 
352 

Franklin,  B. :  early  marriages,  189  ; 
advantages  of  large  families,  189 

Freckles,  not  caused  by  sunshine,  462, 
500,  524 

French  Beauty :  rare  as  Love-marriages, 
272  ;  feet,  362 ;  ugly  fashions,  389 ; 
brunettes  and  blondes,  499;  general 
506  ;  in  America,  510 ;  compared 
with  English,  533 

French  Love:  Chivalry,  99;  Trouba- 
dours, 102  ;  no  flirtation,  123,  126  ; 
grandchildren  sacrificed,  162 ; 
lower  classes,  176 ;  feminine,  at 
thirty,  193, 196  ;  killed  by  ridicule, 
243,  265-274,  341,  508 

French,  T.  R. :  nose-breathing,  445 

Freytag,  G.:  mediaeval  German  mar- 
riages, 281 

Friendship,  24  ;  among  animals,  34  ; 
female,  in  Greece,  81,  180  ;  advan- 
tages over  conjugal  love,  258 

Fringe,  388,  495 

GAIT,  graceful,  357,  363  ;  defects  in 
woman's,  373,  375,  376  ;  in  Spain, 
518,  520,  533 

Gallantry  :  an  overtone  of  Love,  30  ; 
among  animals,  39  ;  among  savages, 
66  ;  birth  of,  in  Eome,  91 ;  crazy 
mediaeval,  100,  157  ;  modern,  157  ; 
conjugal,  185  ;  extravagant  forms 
of,  221 ;  feminine,  244  ;  flattery  in 
actions,  245 ;  Italian,  274 ;  Spanish, 
278,;  German,  283;  American,  298; 
true,  388  ;  why  on  the  wane,  495 

Gal  ton :  on  Coyness,  124 ;  callous 
feelings,  148 ;  morals  and  large 
families,  189  ;  heredity  of  genius, 
201  ;  woman's  senses  less  delicate 
than  man's,  261 ;  ancestral  .iiflu- 
euces,  306  ;  criminal  types,  324  ; 
stature  and  marriage,  521  ;  change 
in  English  physiognomy,  530 


INDEX 


551 


Gastronomy :  cosmetic  value  of,  446  ; 
England,  535  ;  America,  539 

Gautier,  Th. :  woniau  has  no  sense  of 
beauty,  124 

Genius :  emotional,  2,  90,  110 ;  and 
Health,  179  ;  and  marriage,  197 ; 
and  Love,  201,  217;  modern, 
abundant,  203;  in  Love,  204; 
morons  precocity,  204 ;  ardour, 
2,07  ;  versus  rank  and  money,  209  ; 
fickleness,  210  ;  multiplicity,  213  ; 
and  Monopoly,  214 ;  fictitiousness, 
215 

Georgian  women,  60 

German  Beauty  :  144  ;  Bavarian  cor- 
pulence, 385  ;  Brunettes  gaining  on 
Blondes,  499  ;  physiognomy,  514  ; 
general,  522-528 

German  Love :  chivalry,  99  ;  Minne- 
singers, 103  ;  in  Folksongs,  105  ; 
word  for  courtship,  118,  126  ;  in 
novels,  143,  196 ;  gallantry,  240  ; 
compared  with  French,  266,  280-288 

Girls :  of  the  Period,  119 ;  plain, 
chances  of  getting  married,  154 ; 
pretty,  apt  to  be  spoiled,  155, 
200 ;  wrong  education,  156,  261 ; 
cages  versus  nets,  185  ;  hints  on 
men,  187  j  American  and  English  ; 
188;  best  education  for,  195; 
easily  duped,  224 ;  in  France, 
267 ;  Germany,  283  ;  know  when 
they  are  ugly,  307  ;  should  skate, 
373  ;  how  to  acquire  a  line  figure, 
385,  404 

Gladstone:  Greek  hair,  496,  498; 
stature,  520 

Godkin,  E.  L. :  true  character  of 
milliners,  387 

Goethe  :  Elective  Affinities,  5  ;  affec- 
tion for  nature,  15  ;  ancient  love, 
116  ;  first  love,  136  ;  intellect  and 
Love,  157  ;  love  affairs,  202,  206, 
212, 213  ;  unhappy  marriages,  258 ; 
transitorinesjj  of  Love,  287 ;  aversion 
to  noise,  435 

Goldsmith :  on  Love,  116,  165 ;  his 
first  love,  211  ;  English  Love,  299 

Grace,  where  found,  308,  343;  of 
gait,  357 ;  acquired  by  dancing, 
364  ;  destroyed  by  corsets,  382  ; 
movements  of  the  head,  401 ; 
French,  507;  Italian,  514;  Spanish, 
518,  520 


Gradation,  42,  339,  355,  371,  394,  400, 
404,  459 

Grandchildren :  sacrificed  to  money- 
marriages,  160,  162,  245,  260 

Gratiolet,  479 

Greek  Beauty,  83 ;  sources  of,  313  ; 
animals  as  ideals,  332 ;  no  expres- 
sion, 348,  349  ;  feet,  356 ;  gym- 
nastics, 384  ;  hands,  406  ;  chin, 
413;  lips,  414;  ears,  430,  433; 
beards,  489  ;  arrangement  of  hair, 
495  ;  colour  of  hair,  495  ;  stature, 
520 

Greek  Love,  75,  116,  157,  180,  191 

Griffin,  Sir  L. :  French  women,  506 ; 
American  women,  536 

Grose :  noses,  437 

Grote,  G.:  Platonic  love,  80 ;  Greek 
Beauty,  83 ;  Amazons,  191 

Gymnastics  :  among  Greeks,  384 

Gypsy,  Spanish,  516 

HAECKEL,  Prof.,  431,  523 

Hair :  how  to  wear,   388,  530  ;    on 

the    arm,    403 ;    cause    of   man's 

nudity,  486  ;  how  to  remove,  491 ; 

preserved  by  Sexual  Selection,  492 ; 

aesthetic  value  of,  494  ;  blonde  and 

brunette,  496,  501  ;  red,  503 
Hamerton,  P.  G. :  Love  and  age,  138, 

feminine   sympathy,    156  :    embers 

of    passion,    264 ;     French  Love, 

267,  271,  272 

Hammond,  Dr.  W. :  Delirium  of  Per- 
secution, 220  ;  erotomania,  222 
Hand,  402,  405,  408 
Handel,  199 
Harrison,  J.  P. :  length  of  first  and 

second  toes,  359 
Hartrnann,    E.    von  :    pleasure    and 

pain,  168  ;  masculine  and  feminine 

Love,  284 
Hats,    tall,    393 ;    hideous   French, 

388,  494 
Haweis,  Mrs.  :  Fashion  versus  Beauty, 

494  ;   turban,   495  ;  hair -powder, 

503 
Hawthorne,   N. :  a  love-letter,   250 ; 

English    Beauty,    531  ;    American 

physique,  538 
Hawthorne,  Julian  :  German  Beauty, 

526 

Haydn,  198,  206 
Hazlitt,  258 


552 


INDEX 


Head,  the  deformities  of,  328  ;  and 
hair,  492 

Health :  correlated  with  Beauty  in 
flowers,  8,  10  ;  in  animals,  46 ; 
men  and  women,  178  ;  source  of 
Love,  303  ;  source  of  Beauty,  310- 
317,  331,  534  ;  and  delicacy,  344 ; 
exercise,  372  ;  lacing,  380  ;  sins 
against,  419  ;  and  colour,  347,  453, 
458  ;  and  lustre,  469,  477  ;  eyelids, 
473  ;  and  sunshine,  500  ;  in  Italy, 
512  ;  England,  534  ;  America,  538. 

Hebra,  Prof.:  freckles,  462 

Hebrews  :  Love  among  ancient,  69  ; 
sense  of  beauty,  72  ;  absence  of 
jealousy,  129  ;  beauty  and  ugliness 
of,  820 ;  noses,  438,  440 

Hegel :  colour  of  the  skin,  453 

Heine  :  flower  and  butterfly  love,  10  ; 
the  word  love,  11  ;  joy  and  torture, 
32  ;  persiflage  of  coyness,  118,  120; 
jealousy,  130,  132  ;  on  first  Love, 
137  ;  his  marriage,  157  ;  poet  for 
lovers,  170,  202;  his  first  love, 
205  ;  his  true  love,  208  ;  aesthetic 
love,  211  ;  multiplicity,  213  ;  wed- 
ding music,  259  ;  woman's  charac- 
ter, 259  ;  curing  Love  with  Love, 
264  ;  French  Love,  267  ;  an  emo- 
tional educator,  286;  Italian  Beauty, 
515 

Helmholtz  :  overtones,  29 

Herder :  Love,  71  ;  eyes  of  great 
men,  482 

Heredity  :  of  genius,  201 

Hetairai,  79 

Higginson,  T.  W.  :  sexual  likeness, 
174  ;  American  physique,  541 

Hindoo  Love  maxims,  73 

History  of  Love,  67 

Holland,  F.  W.:  morals  and  large 
families,  189 

Holmes,  0.  W.  :  feminine  barbarity, 
151  ;  refined  lips,  419 

Homer :  Helen's  Beauty,  314 

Honeymoon,  164,  188 

Horwicz,  16,  21,  240 

Hottentots  :  notions  of  Beauty,  376 

Howells,  W.  I).  :  monogamy,  133  ; 
feminine  self  -  abnegation,  259  ; 
Italian  courtship,  275-276  ;  broken 
engagements,  300  ;  playful  flattery, 
301 

Hueffer,  P. :  Troubadours,  102 


Hume :  uncertainty  augments  passion, 
124  ;  mixed  emotions,  172 

Humphrey,  Dr. :  walking,  358 

Hungarian  Beauty,  319 

Huxley :  female  education,  261  ;  ape's 
foot,  358 

Hygiene,  modern :  a  source  of  Beauty, 
316  ;  of  the  feet,  362 ;  legs,  373  ; 
chest,  397,  398  ;  fatal  consequences 
of  neglect,  399  ;  eyes,  485,  527  ; 
hair,  493  ;  in  England,  534 

Hyperbole  :  emotional,  an  overtone  of 
Love,  32  ;  in  ancient  Aryan  Love, 
74  ;  modern,  162-166  ;  aftor  mar- 
riage,  184  ;  pathologic  analogies, 
219,  221 ;  contact,  225 ;  and  genius, 
243  ;  in  America,  301 

INDIANS,    American :    wooing,    173 ; 

standard  of  Beauty,  327  ;  muscular 

power,  371  ;  deformed  skulls,  450 
Inrlifl'erence,  feigned  :  value  to  lovers,  • 

241 
Individual  Preference  :  an  overtone  of 

Love,    30  ;     among    animals,    42 ; 

savages,  57,  59  ;  Hebrews,  70,  78  ; 

Greeks,  79;  Romans,  87;  mediaeval 

times,  94,  112  ;  modern,  173-177, 

188  ;  in  France,  268  ;  Italy,  275  ; 

Spain,   278  ;  Germany,  282  ;  Eng- 
land,   288,    535  ;    America,    300  ; 

Schopenhauer  on,  310 
Individualism  versus  Fashion,  389 
Individuality,  174  ;  and  nationality, 

300,  350,  482,  508 
Individuals :  sacrificed  to  species,  302, 

308 
Insanity  and  Love :  analogies,   218  ; 

erotomania,  222 
Intellect  and  Beauty,  61,  155,   217, 

324,  326,  534 
Intellect  and   Love,   61,  74,  79,  83, 

90,  122,  154,  157,  193,  203,  209, 

216,  285,  299,  304 
Intoxication,  amorous,  163,  197 
Iris,  466,  479 
Irving,  Washington :  transient  Love, 

211  ;  intellect  and  Beauty,    324  ; 

Spanish  Beauty,  519 
Italian  Beauty :  274,  276  ;  feet,  359, 

361  ;  nose,   437  ;  hair,  497,    502  ; 

complexion,  501  ;  general,  511-515 
Italian  Love  :  chivalry,  101  ;  no  word 

for  courtship,  118, 196,  274-277,  512 


INDEX 


553 


JAEGER,  G. :  personal  perfumery,  446 

James,  Henry  :  American  women, 
158  ;  Daisy  Miller,  295 

Japan  :  jealousy,  129,  133 

Jaws,  the,  408 

Jealousy :  an  overtone  of  Lore,  30  ; 
among  animals,  39  ;  moral  mission 
of,  62  ;  occasional  absence  among 
savages,  62  ;  Greek,  77  ;  mediaeval, 
103  ;  modem,  127-133  ;  retrospec- 
tive and  prospective,  131  ;  aroused 
by  Beauty,  133,  172 ;  conjugal, 
184  ;  Oriental,  185  ;  morbid,  221 

Jeffrey :  on  Taste,  328 ;  theory  of 
Beauty,  335 

Jews.     See  Hebrews 

Johnson,  Dr. :  second  Love,  135 ; 
marriage  and  Love,  258 

Jowett,  Prof. :  Sokrates,  love  and 
friendship,  258 

KANT  :  women  ensnared  by  counter- 
feit lovers,  243  ;  value  of  smiles, 
421 

Karr,  A.  :  "Woman's  Love,  259 
Keats  :  amorous  hyperbole,  163 ;  para- 
dox, 168  ;  Beauty  and  Love,  177  ; 
love-letters,  246-248 
Kissing,    142,    227  ;  among  animals, 
227  ;     savages,    228  ;     origin     of, 
229  :  ancient,  232  ;  medieval,  233; 
modern,  234  ;  love-kisses,  235  ;  art 
of,   237  ;  varieties  of,  414  ;  on  the 
ears,  432  :  cheeks,  425 
Knight:    Beauty    and    utility,    336, 

340 

Knille  :  Italian  Beauty,  514 
Kollrnann,    Prof. :    feminine   Beauty, 
342  ;  walking,  371  ;  muscular  de- 
velopment, 373  ;  gait,  374 ;  breasts, 
395  ;  face,   411  ;  nose,  436  ;  hair, 
502  ;  results  of  crossing,  320 
Koi-rtn,  the  :  on  woman's  soul,  94 
Krafft-Ebing :    Insanity    and    Love, 
173,  222 

LA  BRUY&RE  :  how  to  win  love,  244 ; 

on  use  of  paint*  459 
Lacing  :  fatal  to  Beauty,  379 
Lamartine :    genius  and   Love,    210  ; 

love-affairs,  252 
Lamb,    Chas.  :     amorous    paradoxes, 

166 ;  love-affairs,  212 
Language  of  Love  :  words,  223  ;  facial 


expression,  224 ;  caresses,  225 ; 
kissing,  227 

La  Rochefoucauld :  Love  and  friend- 
ship, 26  ;  and  absence,  256 

Lathrop,  G.  P.  :  Love-making  in 
Spain,  278  ;  Spanish  Beauty,  518 

Laughter,  421 

Lavater :  chin,  412 ;  ocular  lustre, 
470 

Lawson,  F.  P.  :  effect  of  education  on 
Beauty,  324 

Leanness,  304,  382  ;  how  to  cure,  384 

Lecky :  on  kindness  to  animals,  18  ; 
family  affections  among  Greeks,  75 ; 
asceticism  and  chastity,  93  ;  femi- 
nine devotion,  160  ;  southern  typo 
of  Beauty,  501 

Lenau :  love-letters,  248  ;  music  and 
Love,  257 

Leo,  Judah  :  on  Love,  4 

Lessing  :  every  woman  a  shrew,  259 

Life  :  prolonged  through  hygienic  care, 
316 

Lips,  227,  231  ;  expression  of  scorn, 
410 ;  refined,  413 ;  lip  language, 
414  ;  effect  on,  of  aesthetic  culture, 
419 

Liszt,  1P9 

London,  435 

Longfellow,  264 

Love-charms  (and  calls) :  among  ani- 
mals, 50  ;  for  women,  250,  426 

Love-dramas,  among  flowers,  9 

Love-maxiins  :  Hindoo,  11 

Love,  Romantic :  a  modern  senti- 
ment, 1,  180  ;  superior  to  friend- 
ship, 26  ;  to  maternal  love,  27  ; 
secures  to  man  the  benefits  of  cross- 
fertilisation,  28  ;  overtones  of,  29  ; 
a  great  moral,  aesthetic  and  hygienic 
force,  28,  97  ;  among  animals,  33  ; 
savages,  54  ;  Egyptians,  67  ;  He- 
brews, 69  ;  ancient  Aryans,  72  ; 
more  traces  of  modern  in  Indian 
poetry  than  in  Greek  and  Roman, 
73  ;  among  Greeks,  75  ;  origin  of, 
85 ;  among  Romans,  86 ;  Medi- 
aeval, 92  ;  wooing  and  waiting,  101  ; 
dependent  on  refinement,  101  ; 
maid  versus  married  woman,  105  ; 
birth  of  modern,  109 ;  order  of 
development  proved,  111 ;  at  the 
altar,  113  ;  in  novels,  113  ;  pleasure 
of  pursuit,  115  ;  value  of  procrasti- 


654 


INDEX 


nation,  116,  118  ;  coyness  lessens 
woman's,  119 ;  masculine  deeper 
than  feminine,  120,  259,  272  ; 
modern  jealousy,  127  ;  passion  or 
admiration,  130  ;  is  transient,  135, 
180  ;  is  first  best  ?  136  ;  Heine  on 
first,  137  ;  first  is  not  best,  137  ; 
individual  versus  the  species,  139  ; 
coquetry,  142 ;  opposed  by  rank,  143 ; 
intensifies  emotions,  147  ;  stimu- 
lates social  sympathy,  149  ;  selfish 
aspect  of,  151 ;  at  first  sight,  38, 
152  ;  inspired  by  a  fine  figure,  154  ; 
by  sympathy,  156  ;  responsible  for 
general  growth  of  Gallantry,  158  ; 
refines  men,  159 ;  impels  toward 
self-sacrifice,  159,  161 ;  in  France, 
162 ;  emotional  hyperbole,  162, 
175  ;  intoxication  of,  163  ;  honey- 
moon, 164  ;  mixed  moods  and  para- 
doxes, 166  ;  course  of  true,  170  ; 
lunatic,  lover,  and  poet,  172  ;  and 
conjugal,  173 ;  individual  choice, 
174  ;  and  culture,  176  ;  idealised 
by  Beauty,  177-180 ;  responsible 
for  Beauty,  177  ;  differs  from  con- 
jugal, 180  ;  elements  of,  in  con- 
jugal affection,  184 ;  makes  men 
embarrassed,  187  ;  free  choice  does 
not  always  imply  Love,  188  ;  elimi- 
nates ugly  and  masculine  women, 
190  ;  inspired  by  Beauty,  194  ;  a 
duty,  196 ;  must  be  mutual,  196  ; 
genius  is  amorous,  201 ;  a  creative 
impulse,  202 ;  imagined  is  real, 
£03  ;  arouses  genius,  204 ;  pre- 
cocious, 204  ;  most  intense  in  men 
of  genius,  208  ;  fickle,  210,  216  ; 
loving  two  at  once,  213;  "sub- 
limed" by  Beauty,  218  ;  pathologic 
analogies,  218  ;  erotomania,  222  ; 
language  of,  223  ;  facial  expression 
of,  224 ;  caresses,  225 ;  kissing, 
227  ;  how  to  win,  237-255  ;  femi- 
nine, and  genius,  242  ,  effects  of, 
242 ;  compliments,  244 ;  love- 
letters  not  necessarily  slovenly,  247  ; 
extracts  from,  247-250  ;  charms  for 
women,  251 ;  masculine,  and  vanity, 
252 ;  opposed  to  viragoes,  252  ; 
proposing,  253  ;  signs  and  tests  of, 
254 ;  how  to  cure,  255 ;  effect  of 
absence  on,  256  ;  effects  of  marriage 
on,  257 ;  poiso/^d  by  humilia- 


tion, 263 ;  versus  Love,  264 ; 
chances  of  recovery,  265  ;  national 
peculiarities,  265 ;  massacred  in 
France,  266;  Italian,  274,  276; 
Spanish,  277  ;  German,  280  ;  Eng- 
lish, 288,  299  ;  American,  294  ;  a 
cause  of  Beauty,  280,  301,  309  ; 
points  out  woman's  sphere,  292  ; 
obedience  to,  a  moral  duty,  286  ; 
Schopenhauer's  theory  of,  301-310  ; 
sources  of,  303 ;  complementary, 
explanation  of,  307  ;  leads  to  happy 
marriages,  309  ;  a  source  of  Beauty, 
322  ;  displaces  cruel  Natural  Selec- 
tion, 323,  424 ;  is  inspired  by 
grace,  344,  357,  362 ;  more  con- 
cerned with  form  than  with  colour, 
347  ;  guided  by  subtle  signs,  349  ; 
individualisation  and  "beauty- 
spots,"  350  ;  neglects  no  detail  of 
Beauty,  351  ;  the  object  of  danc- 
ing, 365 ;  killed  by  fashionable 
deformity,  380 ;  feminine  and 
masculine,  401  ;  maintains  aesthetic 
proportion,  412  ;  related  to  Health 
and  Beauty,  415 ;  beautifies  the 
face,  324,  418  ;  special  expression 
of,  418  ;  beautifies  the  lips,  420  ; 
the  cheeks,  424 ;  and  fresh  air, 
426  ;  and  blushes,  429 ;  inspired 
by  a  musical  voice,  435  ;  beautifies 
the  nose,  440 ;  eliminates  high 
feminine  foreheads,  448,  450 ; 
method  of  amorous  selection,  458  ; 
awakens  the  sense  of  beauty,  458  ; 
banishes  rouge,  459  ;  inspired  by 
eyes,  464,  482  ;  beautifies  the  eyes, 
469;  eyebrows,  474,  485;  large 
pupils,  479  ;  musculus  amatorius, 
482  ;  killed  by  sunken  eyes,  483  ; 
preserves  the  hair,  492 ;  favours 
brunettes,  305,  497,  529 ;  eye- 
lashes, 503 ;  and  Beauty,  508 ; 
favours  small  women,  520 ;  versus 
reason,  522 ;  and  Beauty  in  Eng- 
land, 534  ;  sexual  differentiation, 
541 ;  in  America,  541 ;  age  of, 
542 

Lovers:  selfish  bores,  135,  147; 
quarrels,  170  ;  musician  and  poet 
for,  169 ;  falsetto,  224,  436 

Love-sickness  :  real,  222 

Love-stories ;  none  in  Greek  litera- 
ture, 76 


INDEX 


655 


Lxibbock,  Sir  J.  :  on  flowers  and  in- 
sects, 8  ;  absence  of  certain  emo- 
tions in  savages,  55  ;  kissing,  228 

Lungs  :  hygiene  of,  398 

Lustre,  345  ;  in  eyes,  469,  476 

Luther  :  and  marriage,  97 

Lynn  -  Linton,  Mrs.  :  Girl  of  the 
Period,  187 

MACAULAT  :  Petrarch's  love,  216 

Madonna,  Sistine,  481 ;  blond,  497 

Magnus,  Dr.  Hugo :  colour  of  the 
eye,  469  ;  lustre,  470  ;  expression, 
475  ;  portraits,  481 ;  individuality, 
481 

Manicure  secrets,  407 

Manners :  essence  of  good,  495 ; 
Spanish,  530 

Mantegazza :  on  courtship,  118  ; 
caresses,  226 ;  Esquimaux  nose, 
437 ;  Italian  noses,  437,  444  ; 
wrinkles,  452  ;  Italian  Beauty,  512 

Manu,  laws  of  :  on  woman,  72 

Mariolatry :  influence  on  woman's 
position,  97 

Marlowe  :  amorous  hyperbole,  165  ; 
half-kisses,  238 

Marriage  :  among  animals,  36,  37  ; 
Egyptian  trial,  68  ;  modern  ideal 
of,  68  ;  in  Greece,  78  ;  in  Rome, 
93  ;  and  chivalry,  99,  103  ;  Love 
versus  expediency,  112 ;  maiden 
versus  wife,  115  ;  through  accident, 
139  ;  men  becoming  cautious,  156  ; 
Love  not  a  motive  in  France,  162  ; 
of  men  of  genius,  164,  197,  199 ; 
money  versus  Beauty,  177;  "the 
sunset  of  Love,"  181  ;  conditions  of 
happy,  182 ;  nets  and  cages,  185  ; 
of  love,  versus  "  reason,"  186,  522  ; 
hints,  188  ;  chances  for  ugly  women, 
191  ;  age  for,  advancing,  192 ; 
misery  of,  257-260 ;  in  France,  268 ; 
Germany,  281  ;  America,  301  ; 
based  on  Love,  302  ;  and  dancing, 
367  ;  and  noses,  436  ;  and  com- 
plexion, 459  ;  Albinos,  501  ;  and 
stature,  521 

Masculine  Beauty  :  in  feminine  eyes, 
177  ;  more  common  than  feminine, 
312,  348,  397,  400,  403 ;  face,  411 ; 
nose,  441 ;  forehead,  448  ;  wrinkles, 
451  ;  beard,  489,  490,  521 ;  in 
Germany,  524 


Masculine  Love  ;  deeper  than  fem- 
inine, 120,  259,  273;  coquetry, 
142  ;  Gallantry,  158  ;  beautifying 
impulse,  179  ;  insincerity,  187  ; 
comic  expression  of,  224  ;  won  vid 
Vanity,  252 ;  increases  delicacy, 
254  ;  versus  feminine,  284 

Masculine  vanity,  252 

Masculine  women  :  eliminated  as  old 
maids,  190,  253 

Massage,  403 

Maternal  Love,  19 ;  among  animals, 
34,  183 

Mediaeval  Love,  92  ;  celibacy,  versus 
marriage,  92 ;  woman's  lowest  de- 
gradation, 93  ;  negation  of  feminine 
choice,  95  ;  Christianity  and  love, 
97  ;  chivalry,  militant  and  comic, 
99  ;  poetic,  101  ;  female  culture, 
105  ;  Personal  Beauty,  107  ;  Spen- 
ser on  Love,  108 ;  Dante  and 
Shakspere,  109 

Mediaeval  Ugliness  :  causes  of,  315 

Meditation  beautifies  the  face,  480 

Mental  culture  :  a  source  of  Beauty, 
324  ;  France,  509  ;  Italy,  513  ; 
Spain,  519,  520  ;  Germany,  522 ; 
England,  534  ;  America,  541 

Middleton,  167 

Mill,  J.  S.  :  female  self-denial,  161  ; 
companionship  in  marriage,  184 ; 
woman's  sphere,  194 

Milliners'  cunning,  387 

Milton,  107,  198 

Minnesingers,  103 

Mitchell,  Dr.  W.  :  American  phy- 
sique, 538 

Mitchell,  P.  C. :  monkeys'  kisses, 
228 

Mixed  Moods  and  Paradoxes  of  Love, 
32,  166,  185 

Mixture  of  races  (see  also  Crossing) : 
and  Love,  508  ;  in  France,  508  ; 
Italy,  511 ;  Spain,  515  ;  Germany, 
522  ;  England,  516,  528,  538 

Modesty  :  a  source  of  Coyness,  115 ; 
and  blushes,  164 

Monogamy  :  favours  the  development 
of  Love,  64  ;  in  Egypt,  68 

Monopoly  :  an  overtone  of  Love,  30 ; 
among  savages,  63 ;  in  ancient 
Aryan  Love,  74  ;  modern,  133-141 ; 
and  genius,  213  ;  three  are  a  crowd, 
221 ;  in  Leuau's  love-letters,  249  ; 


556 


INDEX 


masculine  and  feminine  Love,  284, 
504 

Montagu,  Lady :  on  woman,  259 
Montaigne :  on  marriage,  259 ;  Italian 

Beauty,  274 
Moore,  T.  :  genius  and  marriage,  197, 

200 ;  first  love,  204 
Moral  impressions :  confounded  with 

{esthetic,  479 
Mormons,  63 

Mountains  :  feelings  inspired  by,  12 
Mouth:  muscles  of,  41 3^;  self-made,  420 
Muscles :   development  of,  303  ;   use 
and  disuse,  327  ;  the  plastic  mate- 
rial of  Beauty,  384  ;  of  an  athlete, 
403  ;  facial,  417  ;  mouth,  418 
Music :  of  male  birds,  does  it  charm 
the  females  ?  50  ;  dance-music,  103 ; 
Chopin's  funeral  march,  170  ;  fans 
love,  257,  330,  339,  408,  419,  480 

NATIONALITY  :  and  Beauty,  505 ;  and 

Love,  266 

Natural  Selection  :  a  cause  of  Beauty, 
42  seq. ;  replaced  by  Love,  323, 
424  ;  blushes,  426  ;  complexion, 
455 ;  eyebrows,  475 ;  loss  of  hair, 
486,  492 
Neck,  400 

Negroes  :  African,  strangers  to  Love, 
55  ;  American,  can  they  love  ?  66  ; 
ugliness  of,  319 ;  standard  of 
Beauty,  328,  331 ;  feet,  355  ;  legs, 
371,  405;  teeth,  415;  lips,  416; 
cause  of  blackness,  456 ;  com- 
plexion, inferiority  of,  458  ;  eyes, 
464,  467,  468,  483  ;  hair,  492 
New  York :  a  silly  fashion  in,  390  ; 
noise  in,  435,  447 ;  effeminate  men, 
641 

Nordau,  Max :  love  in  Germany,  176 
Norton,  C.  E.  :  on  Dante,  109 
Nose,  the :     shape    and    size,    436; 
evolution    of,    437 ;     Greek    and 
Hebrew,  440  ;  fashion  and  cosmetic 
surgery,  442;  important  functions 
of,  445 
Nose-breathing:  importance  of,  398, 

445 

Novels :  Love  in,  11 
Novelty :  and  first  Love,  140 
Nudity :  cause  of  man's,  486 

ODOURS  :  cosmetic  value  of,  446 


Old  Maids,  190 

O'Rell,    Max :     French   chaperonage, 

269  ;  English  degraded  women,  531 
Origin  of  Love,  85 
Ornamentation :  non-aesthetic,  328 
Ovid :     on    tricks    of  Gallantry,   1 ; 

rarity  of  Beauty  in  Rome,  88  ;  art 

of  making  love,  90  ;  Gallantry,  92 ; 

conception  of  Love,  118  ;  enduring 

a  rival,   129 ;    estimate    of,    201  ; 

loving  two  at  once,  213  ;  how  to 

cure  love,  255,  257,  262 

PAHADOXES  of  Love,  166-173,  210 

Parasols,  463 

Pascal :  self-conscious  lovers,  220 

Paternal  love,  20  ;  animals,  34,  107, 
183 

Pepys  :  Spanish  wooing,  278 

Perfume :  personal,  446  ;  cosmetic 
value  of,  446 

Pessimism,  erotic,  302,  310 

Petrarch :  as  a  love-poet,  215 

Photographs :  why  inferior  to  por- 
traits, 348  ;  why  so  often  bad,  482 

Physiognomy :  comparative,  331  ; 
ears,  433  ;  colour  of  the  eyes,  478 ; 
variety  in,  and  Love,  508  ;  language 
of  passion,  153 

Pity  and  Love,  150 

Planchd :  wasp-waists,  379 

Plato:  on  Courtship,  78,  295  ;  "Pla- 
tonic "  Love,  80  ;  origin  of  Love, 
85  ;  pre-matrimonial  acquaintance, 
127;  mixed  mood  of  love,  168; 
irrational  love,  218 ;  feminine  in- 
feriority, 260 ;  Love  and  Beauty, 
322 

Pleasure  and  pain,  168 

Ploss  :  love-charms,  251 ;  Germanic 
marriages,  281 

Plumpness  :  inspires  Love,  304 

Polish  Beauty,  528 

Polygamy :  among  animals,  36  ;  con- 
ducive to  Jealousy,  63 ;  among 
Hebrews,  69  ;  in  India,  72 ;  neu- 
tralises conjugal  love,  181 

Portraits,  348,  480  ;  typical,  537 

Pretty  :  definition  of,  521 

Pride :  in  paternal  love,  22 ;  in  Ro- 
mantic Love,  31  ;  and  vanity,  141- 
145  ;  in  conjugal  love,  184  ;  mas- 
culine vanity,  216  ;  wounded,  cure* 
Love,  263 


INDEX 


657 


Procrastination,  116 

Proportion,  338  ;  facial,  448  ;  stature, 

449 

Proposing,  70,  142,  152,  242,  253 
Prudery,  125,  388 
Purchase  of  wives,  58 
Puritans  :  sins  of,  against  Health,  419 

QUADROONS:  beauty  of  American, 
321 ;  graceful  gait,  361 

RAILWAY  whistles,  434 

Raleigh  :  deep  love,  224,  258 

Rank  :  an  enemy  of  Love,  143,  2G9 

Raphael  :  on  Beauty,  512 

Realism :  emotional,  desirable  in 
novels,  68 

Reclam,  Prof.  :  dust  in  lungs,  445  ; 
night  air,  317,  525 

Richardson,  W.  B.  ;  the  ideal  city, 
316 

Right-handedness,  408 

Roberts,  Charles :  brunettes  and 
blondes,  529 

Roberts,  J.  B.  :  nasal  deformities,  444 

Rochefoucauld,  La  :  women,  love,  and 
friendship,  26  ;  pleasure  of  love,  196 

Roman  Beauty,  88  ;  hair,  497 

Roman  Love,  86-92 

Rousseau :  on  woman's  Love,  120 ; 
his  last  love,  206,  252 

Riickert :  kissing,  236 

Ruskin  :  poetry  and  science,  9  ;  love 
of  dismal  scenery,  13 ;  amorous 
paradoxes,  167 ;  woman's  work, 
291  ;  health  and  beauty,  311  ;  and 
utility,  311  ;  happiness  essential  to 
beauty,  315  ;  intellect  beautifies 
the  features,  324  ;  taste  of  savages, 
330  ;  beauty  and  utility,  332  ;  de- 
gradation and  ugliness,  334  ;  wild 
scenery,  337  ;  symmetry,  338 ;  cur- 
vature, 341 ;  colour,  345,  347  ; 
moderation,  378  ;  expression  in  the 
mouth,  410 ;  virtue  and  Beauty, 
421 ;  Greek  features,  440  ;  turban, 
beauty  of,  495  ;  southern  Beauty, 
501 

Russian  old  maids,  193 

SAPPHO  :  as  a  Love-poet,  81 

Savages :  development  of  maternal 
love,  20 ;  parental  love,  irregular, 
21 ;  filial  love  weak,  22 ;  strangers 


to  Romantic  Love,  54 ;  inferior 
to  birds,  54 ;  courtship,  56 ;  re- 
gard  for  beauty,  60 ;  Jealous j 
and  Polygamy,  62,  128  ;  Gallantry, 
157  ;  masculine  women,  174  ;  no- 
tions of  Beauty,  179, 328  ;  conjugal 
attachment,  182 ;  kissing,  229 ; 
sense  delicacy,  231  ;  inferior  to  us 
in  Health,  312  ;  taste,  327,  409  ; 
tests  of  Beauty,  331,  485  ;  ugliness 
of,  333  ;  dancing,  365  ;  muscular 
development,  371 ;  noses,  437 ; 
paint,  458 

Scalp  :  movements  of,  451 

Scandinavian  complexion,  459,  500 

Scherer  :  on  mediaeval  German  Love, 
105 

Scherr,  J. :  on  witchcraft  trials,  94 ; 
Wieland  in  love,  213  ;  Petrarch, 
216 ;  mediaeval  courtship,  239  ; 
mediaeval  Spanish  women,  277 

Schiller  :  Minnesingers,  104 

Schopenhauer  :  on  the  Will,  3  ;  se»- 
thetic  enjoyment,  13;  final  cause 
of  colour  in  animals,  50 ;  love  at 
first  sight,  152 ;  self-sacrifice,  161  ; 
torments,  169  ;  celibacy  and  genius, 
197  ;  genius  and  woman's  love, 
242 ;  unhappy  marriages,  259  ; 
theory  of  Love,  301-310  ;  animal 
Beauty,  332  ;  masculine  and  fem- 
inine beauty,  343  ;  small  feet,  354  , 
the  unaesthetic  sex,  386  ;  noise  and 
culture,  435 ;  noses  and  marriage, 
436,  443  ;  Germans,  523 

Schumann,  R.  :  162;  love-affairs,  214; 
on  German  Beauty,  526 

Schweiger-Lerchenfeld :  Italian  women, 
275  ;  Spanish  love-making,  278 

Schwenninger  cure  for  corpulence,  383 

Scotch  Beauty,  537 

Scott,  Sir  W.  :  on  Dryden  and  Love, 
89 ;  and  marriage,  198,  217  ;  mas- 
culine vanity,  252 

Seeley,  Prof.  :  Goethe  on  Love,  287 

Selden  :  marriage,  261 

Self-sacrifice :  an  overtone  of  Love, 
31,  131,  157;  conjugal,  160,  188; 
in  feminine  Love,  284;  Schopen- 
hauer on,  301,  309 

Sellar,  Prof.  :  Ovid,  201 

Seneca :  Beauty,  259 

Sensuality  and  Romantic  Love,  76 

Service  for  a  wife,  6S 


558 


INDEX 


Sex  :  the  unsesthetic,  386 ;  and  edu- 
cation, 541 
Sexual  differentiation,  174,  489,  520, 

541 

Sexual  Selection  (see  also  Love  and 
Individual  Preference) :  among  ani- 
mals, 44  ;  primitive  men,  59  ;  effect 
on  chest,  394;  loss  of  hair,  403, 
486  ;  blushes,  426  ;  ears,  429  ; 
noses,  440  ;  complexion,  455  ;  eyes, 
464,  465  ;  masculine  and  feminine, 
489  ;  preserves  hair  on  head,  492  ; 
action  uncertain,  493  ;  versus  Na- 
tural Selection,  542 
Shakspere :  treatment  of  Love,  2, 
111 ;  invests  inanimate  objects  with 
human  feelings,  3  ;  on  Beauty,  32  ; 
coyness  and  modesty,  115;  woman's 
Love,  120  ;  amorous  hyperbole,  162; 
course  of  true  love,  170  ;  what  in- 
spires love  in  women,  178  ;  mar- 
riage of,  198  ;  amorous  character 
of,  201  ;  blind  love,  202  ;  lunatic 
and  lover,  218  ;  kissing,  236  ;  win- 
ning love,  238  ;  refusals,  241  ;  flat- 
tery, 244 ;  unsought  love,  254 ; 
tests  of  Love,  255  ;  love  never  fatal, 
255  ;  reason  as  Love's  physician, 
263  ;  hereditary  Beauty,  322  ;  feet, 
351  ;  the  beautiful  and  the  charac- 
teristic, 410  ;  poet  of  Love,  421  ; 
blushes,  426 ;  expression  in  the 
eyes,  475,  483  ;  love  inspired  by 
eyes,  482  ;  Blondes  and  Brunettes, 
496,  497 

Shelley  :  paradox  of  Love,  167  ;  lov- 
ing and  being  loved,  196  ;  amorous 
disposition  of,  202,  217 

Shoes  :  tight,  objections  to,  353  ;  im- 
provements in,  363 

Shoulders,  the,  400 

Simcox,  G.  A. :  on  Gallantry,  92 ; 
medueval  ugliness,  315  ;  noses,  442 

Sisterly  love,  23 

Skating  :  effects  on  Beauty,  373 

Skin.     See  Complexion. 

Sleep :  and  noise,  317,  434  ;  refresh- 
ing, 398 

Smoothness,  344,  394,  403,  432,  488, 
490 

Soap :  should  be  used  in  the  face, 
452,  462  ;  good  and  bad,  461 

Solomon's  Song,  70 

Sources  of  Love,  303 


Southey  :  woman's  faith,  259 

Southwell,  167 

panish  Beauty :  feet,  362 ;  grace, 
374,  518,  533  ;  chest  deformed  by 
Fashion,  395  ;  lips,  419  ;  mantillas, 
388,  510 ;  complexion,  501 ;  general, 
515-522  ;  refinement,  524 

Spanish  Love :  chivalry,  99  ;  falling 
in  love,  152,  196  ;  extravagant  Gal- 
lantry, 221  ;  ardour,  275,  277-280 

Spencer,  Herbert :  on  primitive  pa- 
ternal love,  21  ;  filial  love,  22  ; 
analysis  of  Love,  31,  33  ;  money- 
marriages,  113  ;  woman's  sphere, 
195  ;  origin  of  kissing,  229  ;  irre- 
gular mixture  of  ancestral  qualities 
in  children,  306  ;  individuals  versus 
the  species,  308  ;  female  savages 
uglier  than  male,  312  ;  intellectual 
and  physical  beauty,  320  ;  evolution 
of  Beauty,  327  ;  muscular  power  of 
savages,  371  ;  laziness  of  savages, 
372  ;  masculine  Fashion,  392 

Spenser  :  Love  and  friendship,  108 

Stael,  Mine,  de :  on  Beauty  and  in- 
tellect, 32  ;  Love  versus  parental 
dictation,  273 

Stantou,  Mrs.  E.  C.,  97 

Stature  and  Beauty,  520 

Stays  :  for  deformed  women,  385 

Steatopyga,  375 

Steele :  kissing,  227  ;  love-letters, 
247 

Stenches  and  noises,  435 

Stendhal :  Love  and  age,  138  ;  Love 
in  France,  176  ;  humiliation  poisons 
Love,  263,  266 

St.  Jerome  :  on  the  education  of  girls, 
96 

Stockings  :  best  kind,  363 

Suckling  :  lovers'  pallor,  225 

Suicide  :  from  Love,  121 

Sunshine  :  good  for  the  complexion, 
454  ;  does  not  cause  freckles,  462  ; 
and  Health,  500,  512,  515 

Surgery,  cosmetic,  432,  443 

Swift:  marriage,  185;  love-affairs, 
210 

Swiss,  the,  525 

Symmetry,  natural  tendency  to,  is 
flowers,  10,  73,  180,  216 

Symonds :  on  Italian  Love,  101; 
formal  code  of  Love,  106;  Petrarch, 
216  ;  Shelley,  217 


INDEX 


559 


Sympathy :  and  affection,  73 ;  an  over- 
tone of  love,  31,  145-157  ;  develop- 
ment of,  147 ;  in  conjugal  love, 
183 

TAINE,  H. :  English  Beauty  and  Love, 
532  seq. 

Taste  :  aesthetic  theories  of,  327  ;  dis- 
puting about,  339,  409,  417,  423  ; 
versus  Fashion,  437  ;  sense  of,  446 ; 
non-testhetic  standard,  529 

Teeth  :  409,  411,  415  ;  care  of,  422 

Tennyson :  kissing,  235 

Tests  of  Beauty:  negative,  330; 
positive,  338 

Thackeray :  advice  to  lovers,  126 ; 
Love,  168  ;  to  women,  252  ;  sim- 
pering Madonnas,  315  ;  dark  hero- 
ines, 498  ;  French  physique,  506 

Thaxter,  Mrs. :  women  and  birds,  151 

Thomson,  218 

Toe,  great,  evolution  of,  359 

Topinard:  early  decrepitude  of  savages, 
312  ;  life  prolonged  in  France,  316; 
crossing,  318,  320  ;  nose,  437  ;  de- 
formed skulls,  450 ;  dark  races, 
501  ;  French  nation,  508 

Tourgenieff:  on  a  dog's  love,  17;  first 
love,  204 

Trollope,  A.  :  American  Gallantry, 
298 

Troubadours,  102,  221,  222 

Trousers,  392 

Turks,  319 

Tylor,  E.  B. :  the  ape's  gait,  357  ; 
arms,  402  ;  negro's  finger-nails, 
406  ;  blushing,  427  ;  ears,  433  ; 
nose,  437  ;  skulls,  450 

Tyranny  of  ugly  women,  387,  496 

UGLINESS  :  follows  ill  -  health  in 
animals,  46  ;  in  women,  186  ;  no 
bar  to  marriage,  191  ;  medioeval, 
31 4  ;  due  to  simian  resemblance, 
331 ;  savage  features,  333  ;  degrad- 
ation, 333 ;  decrepitude  and  dis- 
ease, 334  ;  tyranny  of,  387  ;  due 
to  indolence,  397 ;  a  sin,  400 ; 
"beauty-spots,"  452 

Use  and  disuse,  effect  of,  on  organs, 
327 

Utility  and  Beauty,  332,  336 

VEILS,  463 


Vice  :  destroys  Beauty,  418,  4J  8 

Viragoes,  175,  190 

Virchow,Prof.:  Brunettes  and  Blondes, 

499 

Virgil :  Love-episode,  89 
Vogt,  Carl :  sexual  divergence,  174  ; 

negro's    feet,    356 ;     females    and 

animals,  360  ;  thighs,  371 
Voice,  a  musical,  435 
Voltaire :    on    ancient    and    modern 

friendship,  26  ;  standard  of  taste, 

327 

WAGNER,  R.:  leading  motives,  literary 
application  of,  114  ;  analogies  be- 
tween Love  and  music,  140 ; 
feminine  devotion,  160  ;  marriage, 
198  ;  a  musical  kiss,  237,  330,  414 

Waist,  378 

Waitz :  Magyars,  319  ;  Chinese  com- 
plexion, 454,  457  ;  decrease  in 
number  of  blondes,  498 

Walker,  A. :  259  ;  woman's  gait,  375 ; 
French  Beauty,  506 

Walking,  357,  364 

Wallace,  A.  R. :  on  choice  exerted  by 
animals,  43  ;  Natural  versus  Sexual 
Selection,  43-50  ;  beauty  correlated 
with  health  in  animals,  46  ;  sources 
of  colour  in  animals,  48 ;  chest  of 
Amazon  Indians,  396  ;  hair  on  arm, 
403 

Waltz :  the  dance  of  Love,  369 

Warner,  Chas.  D. :  women  and  birds, 
151 

Wasp-waist  mania,  the,  379,  494 

Wealth,  vulgar  display  of,  387 

White,  R.  G. :  blonde  type,  497  J 
Viennese  Beauty,  528 

Wieland:  love-affair,  213 

Wife :  capture,  57  ;  purchase,  58  ; 
service  for,  58  ;  capture  and  coy- 
ness, 114;  selling,  289 

Wilde,  Oscar,  392 

Winckelmann :  Greek  Beauty,  314, 
332  ;  curvature,  342 ;  breasts,  395 ; 
Greek  chest,  397  ;  hand,  405  ;  chin, 
413  ;  dimples,  413  ;  lips,  415  ; 
ears,  431  ;  nose,  436 ;  eyes,  473  ; 
hair,  496,  502  ;  dark  complexion, 
500,  501 ;  Italian  Beauty,  514 

Winning  Love,  art  of:  1,  41,  75,  115, 
126,  129,  237-255 ;  brass  buttons, 
238  ;  confidence  and  boldness,  239 ; 


560 


INDEX 


pleasant  associations,  239 ;  perse- 
verance, 241  ;  feigned  indifference, 
241  ;  compliments,  245 ;  Love- 
letters,  246  ;  for  women,  250  ;  pro- 
posing, 253  ;  how  to  meet  coyness, 
254 ;  spicing  flattery  with  bur- 
lesque, 301 

Witchcraft,  trials  for,  94 

Woe,  ecstasy  of,  168 

Woman :  weak  in  impersonal  emo- 
tions, 16  ;  strong  in  conjugal  and 
maternal  love,  19  ;  inferior  to  man 
in  Romantic  Love,  19,  120  ;  pre- 
fers manly  to  handsome  men,  60  ; 
position  in  Egypt,  67 ;  among 
Hebrews,  69  ;  in  India,  72  ;  ancient 
Greece,  77  ;  Rome,  87  ;  mediaeval 
degradation,  93 ;  proverbs  about, 
96  ;  oasis  of  culture,  105  ;  position 
in  France,  107  ;  cruelty  to  birds, 
150 ;  intelligent,  155  ;  in  public 
life,  160,  175  ;  loses  Beauty  pre- 
maturely, 186  ;  employment  pro- 
blem, 195,  290  ;  uniform  worship, 
237  ;  discourages  deep  Love,  242  ; 


inferior  to  man,  259;  Huxley's 
ideal,  261  j  in  mediaeval  Spain, 
277  ;  indifferent  to  loss  of  Health, 
and  the  consequences,  312  ;  superior 
in  Beauty  to  man,  342  ;  deplorable 
conservatism,  367  ;  penalty  of  in- 
dolence, 385  ;  has  no  sense  ol 
beauty,  385,  388,  396,  401,  494 ; 
needs  no  stays,  385  ;  deficient  in 
taste,  386  ;  duped  by  sly  milliners, 
387  ;  object  of  dress,  388  ;  needs 
aesthetic  instruction,  389 ;  riding 
hat,  392  ;  fashion  preferred  to  good 
manners,  495 

Wooing.    See  courtship 

Woody,  S.  E. :  electrolysis  for  removing 
hairs,  494 

Wrinkles,  406,  451 

YANKEE,  542 
Young,  198 

ZFMMERMANN,  0.:    Ecstasy   of   wo% 

168 
Zola,  420 


ires  END 


-~  BOOK  IS  1 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


lltoc'63*F 

AUG  ?n  1Q7Q 

-lit        AUL: 

REC'D  LC 

OEr.  2  6'63-8 

JfOV  0  b  V 

«t& 

__  ,      .    <nr| 

•VJW 

Htc.oiH.  crrc  DO 
M/iv  i  j  lam 

^? 

•- 

'  *  4  iS9| 

MftY^'bA-^M 

v>  / 

FEB2    '65J 

REG  D  LD 

rrpl     'R5-1.PM 

rn.D  * 

&&&£* 

K^rr.rn  ?  n, 

MAV  ijo'es-iifl 

/I 

LD  21A-40m-4,'63 
(D6471slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


